


I always find you in this crowd

by inlovewithnight



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Aromantic Character, Feelings, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22898092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: By the time they let Erik into the hospital room to see Gabe, all the blood’s been cleaned up. He knows what the camera showed, what happened in that room in the mountains, though. He’s never going to forget that, as hard as he tries.
Relationships: Erik Johnson/Gabriel Landeskog
Comments: 25
Kudos: 272





	I always find you in this crowd

**Author's Note:**

> There's some cavalier use of painkillers in this; also a reference to cocaine use, but it does not occur on-screen. 
> 
> There is discussion of possible sexual assault.

By the time they let Erik into the hospital room to see Gabe, all the blood’s been cleaned up. He knows what the camera showed, what happened in that room in the mountains, though. He’s never going to forget that, as hard as he tries. 

His eyes track Gabe’s face, clean and bandaged now, and he remembers the blood around his mouth, under his nose, dried around the nasty cut along one orbital bone. Below the neck, Gabe’s wearing a hospital gown and tucked under the sheets now. Erik doesn’t want to remember what his body looked like in the other room, but it’s there behind his eyes where he can’t get away from it.

Hot, sour bile floods his mouth and he lunges to spit into the trashcan. Gabe doesn’t stir, which is good, but it also fucking sucks. He wants Gabe to sit up and talk to him. He wants Gabe to be awake. He wants Gabe to be _okay_.

Erik sits in the chair next to the bed and puts his head between his knees. Fuck.

“I’ve been so fucking scared,” he says, wrapping his fingers around the edge of the seat. “I’m so glad we found you but you gotta… you gotta wake up and talk to me now, Landy. For real, I need to hear your voice. I need you to say you’re okay.”

He’s not okay, is the thing, and Erik knows it. His hands are hidden under the sheet, but Erik saw them on the screen, in that room, knows the fingers are broken and mangled. Right now they must be a mass of bandages. 

Erik’s stomach heaves again, but he controls it this time. He sits upright and folds his hands on the edge of the mattress. “You _will_ be okay,” he says finally, trying to will steadiness into his voice. “You will be. It might take some time, but we’ll get you there.”

More silence. Erik rests his head on his hands, struggling to keep his breath even. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he shouldn’t be here. 

“Erik?” 

He rubs at his eyes and sits up, looking over his shoulder at the doorway, where Nate is hovering. “Yeah.”

“They sent me up to get you. Some of the other guys have stopped by and we can only have one in here at a time.” Nate looks super-apologetic, but Erik nods and gets to his feet without arguing. 

“Do you want a minute?” he asks, stepping back from the bed. He can’t quite look away from Gabe’s face, though, even as he’s moving.

“No,” Nate says quickly. “I hate hospitals, man. I can’t deal with seeing him like this. The minute he gets home I’ll be there, but this…”

Erik nods. “I know what you mean.”

**

The next day when he comes back to the hospital, Beatrice is there. She’s sitting at Gabe’s bedside, running her finger back and forth over the back of Gabe’s hand, but she looks up when Erik hesitates in the doorway.

“EJ,” she says, relief flooding her face. “Oh, thank god.” 

She hurries over to hug him and he wraps her up in his arms, closing his eyes tight so he won’t get tears in her hair. She’s rumpled and there’s makeup smeared under her eyes, and he feels the same surge of protectiveness toward her that he has since Gabe introduced them such a long time ago. Like she’s his sister, too.

“When did you get in?” he asks, steering her back to the chair. “Did they get you a hotel? If not, I’ll take care of it. You look exhausted. Have you eaten?”

She laughs a little, watery and sad. “So many questions. I got in this morning, I have a room, I am tired, yes, and I had a yogurt a little while ago.”

He nods, resting his hand on the back of the chair and looking at Gabe in the bed. Maybe it’s his imagination but he thinks Gabe’s face has a better color than yesterday. Less pale. “Has he woken up yet?”

“He has. We talked a little bit earlier.” She rubs at her eyes and tries to smile. “He’s pretty drugged up, and he’s so tired, but… but he’s himself. He knows what’s going on.”

Erik didn’t realize how much tension he was holding until some of it slips and his knees almost give out. “Oh. Oh, that’s… that’s good.”

“Yeah.” She finds his hand and squeezes gently. “He asked for you.”

Erik doesn’t sob. His breath just catches in his chest, so hard it hurts, but it’s not a sob. “Oh.”

“He asked about the team, and everybody, but he must’ve asked three or four times where’s EJ, where’s Erik.” Her voice breaks at the end, and he squeezes her hand back. “I was actually just about to try to find someone to call you when you came in.”

“I’ve got great timing.” He takes a deep breath that only shakes a little bit. “Let me put my number in your phone right now so we don’t have to worry about that again.” 

That takes up a few more minutes and then they’re left, again, with just sitting in silence watching the man they both love so much lying there breathing. At least he _is_ breathing, Erik thinks, curling his free hand into a fist at his side. It could be worse. It could’ve gone the other way.

“What did the doctors say?” Erik asks finally, not because he wants to know but because he should.

Beatrice is still holding his hand, but her eyes are on Gabe’s face against the pillow. “Dehydrated, exhausted, of course. Some infection. Malnutrition but not badly, I didn’t really understand that part. And his hands.”

“How bad are his hands?”

“Only three of his fingers are broken. That’s the good news.”

Erik doesn’t want to ask, but he’s in this deep. And he needs to know. “And the bad news?”

She looks up at him and shrugs a little. “Those three are pretty bad.”

He knew it, of course he knew it, but it’s still a punch to the chest. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” She sighs and looks at Gabe again, reaching out with her free hand to adjust the sheet where it lies across his chest. “But he’s safe now.”

“Right, of course.” The closest part of Gabe he can touch is the outline of his thigh under the sheet, so he rests his hand there carefully. At least he can feel the warmth of Gabe’s body, the proof that he’s still with them. “That’s what matters.”

Gabe stirs a little, his brow furrowing and his lips parting. He doesn’t speak, but makes an unhappy sound, and Beatrice leans in closer to say something in Swedish. 

Erik makes himself pull his hand away, because if he doesn’t, he’s probably going to squeeze too hard. God, Gabe. Gabe, Gabe, Gabe.

Gabe’s gone still again, face still tensed like he’s listening to Beatrice. His eyelids quiver and then open, blinking slowly as he looks up at her. She’s still speaking in Swedish, and Erik can’t follow it at all until he hears “EJ” in the stream of words. 

Gabe’s eyes flick to him now, struggling to focus, and Erik needs something to do with his hands, anything. He shoves them into the pockets of his jeans and finally, finally, Gabe seems to really see him.

“Hey,” Erik says, his voice coming out hoarse and harsh to his own ears. He swallows hard and tries again. “Hey, Landy.”

He doesn’t answer, but he stares at Erik for a long moment, relief visible on his face even through the fog of drugs and exhaustion. Erik feels like his heart is swelling in his chest, cutting off his air, leaving him floating like a cartoon character that ran over a cliff.

Beatrice says something else and kisses Gabe’s forehead, and his eyes drift closed again. Erik takes a step back from the bed, dragging in a sharp breath.

“Oh my god,” he says, his voice shaking, and now his knees really do give out. He manages a controlled drop to his knees instead of falling on his face, at least, but he can’t do anything about the fact that as soon as he reaches the floor, he starts to cry.

**

The nurse who comes in to give Gabe his next dose of painkiller says he’ll be out for a while after that, so Erik and Beatrice leave the hospital to find lunch. There’s a café near the entrance to the wing that Gabe’s in, and it seems able to manage coffee and sandwiches, so they end up there.

Neither of them is crying anymore, so that’s a start. Erik drinks half of his mug of coffee in one long swallow, then sets it aside and covers his face with his hands.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Beatrice asks. “Or absolutely not talk about it at all?”

“The second one,” he mumbles, pressing his hands harder against his eyes. “Please.”

“Okay.” He hears her spoon clinking against her own coffee mug. 

Part of him wants to say something deeply stupid, like _You have no idea how scared we were_ , but the rest of him is aware of how stupid that is and can hold it back. Of course she knows. She was not only that scared, she was half a continent and an ocean away. 

“Do you want to call your parents?” he asks instead, dropping his hands to his lap.

“I’ve been texting them.” She pauses to sip her coffee, then rips open another sugar packet. “They’ll fly out in a few days. They wanted to come right away, but I told them having three people hovering over his bed would be more stress for him, and they should take the extra time to take care of themselves before they come.”

“That’s really smart.” 

She smiles weakly. “Selfish, too. I didn’t want to wait to find a flight with three tickets, or shuffle them through connections, or any of that. I just wanted to get to him.”

“Believe me, I understand.” His shoulder still aches from Nate holding him back when the FBI team said they were ready to go in. Leave it to the professionals, yeah, but—Erik just wanted to get to him.

Their sandwiches come and they eat in silence for a few minutes, Erik automatically sliding back into being hyperaware of his phone in his pocket, waiting for the buzz of a call. It isn’t going to happen and he knows it—Gabe's phone is still dead, for god’s sake, it’s in a bag at the hospital somewhere, probably. But apparently that got wired into him harder than he thought, faster than he would’ve thought possible.

“If I’m being invasive, tell me to stop,” Beatrice says after a while, and Erik looks up from his plate. Her face is flushed and she’s fiddling with her coffee cup, her mouth twisted in a frown. “But... Gabe never really told me why you guys broke up.”

Oh. Erik’s shoulders slump. A normal question, then. Nothing to be afraid of, even if he isn’t sure he has a good answer for it. “That’s probably because there wasn’t really a why. We just kind of...” He gestures vaguely. “Kinda petered out, I guess. There wasn’t a big fight or anything.”

She frowns more, but at least she’s looking at him now. “And you’re still good friends, obviously.”

“Yeah, exactly.” He wishes he knew how to explain this better. Nobody has ever understood when he tries to explain how he sees relationships; even Gabe didn’t really get it, but he was content with _if it works, it works, as long as I’m not going to lose you in my life._

From the look on her face, she’s still hoping for him to explain more, so he takes a sip of his coffee and tries. “We were friends before we got together, you know? And then we started hooking up, so we decided to...” The normal thing to say here was _to see if dating would work_ , but that wasn’t it, not really. “To call it dating,” he finished instead, shrugging a little. “And see if that worked. I’m not much of a romantic, you know, but we thought maybe…”

She isn’t frowning anymore, but her brow is furrowed up like this is hard to follow. Maybe it is. It always seems to be, even though it makes perfect sense to him. “So it worked for a while.”

“Yeah.” It worked really well; he had a best friend who he also had sex with. They went to lunch and dinner, they hung out on the couch and watched movies, they talked about everything, and they went to bed together after. It was great. It was everything he always thought people _meant_ when they talked about finding the one and being in love.

“And then...?” She leans forward a little, face intent. She really wants to understand this, he can tell. Hopefully he can give her enough of an explanation.

“The sex kind of stopped.” There wasn’t any hard and fast _why_ ; just more and more nights where they fell asleep without it, and woke up and didn’t do it, and neither of them missed it enough to talk about it. He knows for a fact that it was neither of them, because they finally did talk about it, the night they finally _did_ talk about it, over dinner in Calgary of all fucking places. 

He remembers Gabe’s face, and the frantic note in his voice as he said over and over that he didn’t want to _lose_ Erik, but he thought... maybe... this wasn’t what it had been anymore.

He blinks himself back to the present and shrugs again, meeting Beatrice’s eyes. “But the friendship stuff never stopped, even when the sex did, and even when we decided to stop calling it dating. We both saw other people, off and on. But the important part didn’t change, you know?”

Leaning across the table, grabbing Gabe’s wrist—not his hand, they had just finished talking about how they were ending the part where they could hold hands—and saying as fiercely as he could _You’re not going to lose me, Landeskog. Still best friends. Still the person I’d jump in front of a car for. You ever need me, I’ll be there, no matter what. Three in the morning. Whatever. I’m there._

Beatrice is smiling now, at least. “I guess you proved that. He’s never going to beat you at being a good friend now.”

He tries to laugh, he really does, but the sound that comes out is... not. “Believe me, it’s not a great prize.”

“I’m glad you were here.” She takes a deep breath and sits up straighter. “I should get back over there, I guess.” 

“If you want to go back to your hotel and get some rest, I can sit with him.” She shakes her head, but he can see she’s wavering. “I mean it, I don’t mind at all. I’ll grab a newspaper. The nurse said he’ll be asleep for a few hours. Grab a nap and when you come back he’ll probably just be ready to wake up again.”

“Are you sure?” She sounds so tired, so hopeful, that even if he had been just saying it for the sake of saying it, that would’ve decided him.

“Yes. I’m sure.” He gets to his feet and digs his wallet out. “I’ll pay the check and get my paper, you get an Uber, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“You’re a prince, Erik.” She smiles up at him and it’s too much like Gabe’s smile. It squeezes his heart too much for him to answer, so he just nods and goes up to the cash register, hoping his hands will stop shaking by the time he has to pull out his card.

**

The next day is pretty much the same: he takes Beatrice to lunch and sits with Gabe while she naps at the hotel. Then he goes to the rink and works out. Then he collapses in bed for a few hours of fitful dozing before dinner, TV, hopefully some actual sleep.

The day after, though, he runs into Beatrice in the hallway between the elevator and Gabe’s room. “Erik!” Her face is lit up. “There you are.”

He checks his phone automatically, his chest going tight. No missed texts since he sent one to her saying he was parked and on his way up. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.” She laughs and grabs him by the arm. “They think he can go home today. There’s one more blood thing they want to check and if it’s okay, he can recuperate at home.”

Another sudden collapse of tension in his shoulders; he never notices it’s building back up again until he hears something that makes it give way. “That’s so great.”

“He’s awake.” She glances at the elevators and grins at him. “He asked if I can go get him a milkshake. Go sit with him while I do that?”

His heart starts pounding in his ears. “Yeah, of course.” He’s awake, Gabe’s awake. He’s asking for things. Erik can talk to him. “Did you tell him I was on my way up?”

“I said you’d be here soon.” She squeezes his arm and lets go. “I’ll bring you a milkshake, too.”

“Chocolate,” he says, already moving down the hall. “Thanks.”

Gabe is still in bed, of course, still more pale than Erik wants to see him, still bruised and bandaged and nursing dark circles under his eyes. He still has an IV in his arm and a painkiller fog in his eyes. But he looks up when Erik comes in the door, and his eyes widen, and he says “EJ,” and Erik—

God, Erik wants to be a strong tough guy, but he’s not right now. He’s a guy who has tears streaming down his face as he goes to Gabe’s bedside and leans down over him. He doesn’t know where to put his hands, doesn’t know if it’s safe to hug him or if it’ll hurt, so he rests their foreheads together, eyes shut, tears dripping down. 

“Hey,” Gabe says, and Erik hears a sob catching in his voice, too. “Hey, Erik. You’re here.”

“Yeah.” He makes himself pull back so Gabe can get some air, and wipes roughly at his eyes. “I’m here. Not going anywhere.”

Gabe looks at him steadily, eyes wide. “You saved me.”

“The cops did that, bud.” Erik’s not a goal-scorer, he’s an assist man. Credit where credit is due.

But Gabe shakes his head, jaw clenching in a familiar stubborn line. “You saved me, Erik.”

Not arguing with the man in the hospital bed can take precedent over credit going where due, just this once. “Okay, Landy. Yeah. You’re safe now.”

“My hands are all fucked up.”

The pit of Erik’s stomach does something hot and twisty and rage-filled, but he shoves that down, back, away. He’ll deal with it later. “Don’t worry about that right now. We’ll get you all fixed up, but you need to rest first.”

Gabe’s gaze drifts from Erik’s face and wanders around the room. “I really want to go home.”

“Hopefully today.” 

“Have you been feeding Zoey?” 

“Nate has her. He’s been taking good care of her, don’t worry.”

Gabe nods and his eyelids droop a little. “Fuck. I hate this.”

“Don’t fight it, okay? Your body needs rest, let yourself rest.”

The noise Gabe makes isn’t a laugh, either, but Erik recognizes the effort. “I want that milkshake.”

“Okay, you can stay awake for that. But don’t try to talk, okay? Just... just relax.”

Gabe nods, settling back reluctantly. “Sit down?”

Erik drops into the bedside chair and pulls it closer to the bed, and when Gabe pulls his hand out from under the sheets and holds it out toward him, he cradles it carefully between his own. This hand only has one broken finger, splinted and bandaged now. 

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Erik focused on feeling the pulse beat in Gabe’s wrist and fingertips. When he looks up, Gabe’s eyes are closed, and whether he’s asleep again or just resting his eyes, it gives Erik a minute to let his control slip and his face contort like a Halloween mask. God, this is hard. It shouldn’t be. This is supposed to be the good part.

**

Erik’s nightmares always start at the restaurant. He’s himself, exactly as he was that night, laughing with Gabe and eating a perfectly-done elaborate game hen thing—and he’s also himself now, knowing what’s going to happen that night, trapped in his own head and unable to scream a warning.

They finish the meal and have coffee and then they both walk outside and Gabe grins at him under the streetlights before they separate to walk to their cars. Erik tries one more time to scream, to tell him not to go, but past-Erik in the dream never says anything, never misses a step.

Erik always wakes up sweating and gasping for air, scrambling for his phone. He checks the date and time, then his texts, everything he can to reassure himself that this is _now_ , that it’s over. He’s got messages from Beatrice saying she’s here, Gabe is asleep in a hospital bed, he should park in the second lot today because they’re repainting curbs. He’s got messages in the team group chat organizing who can stop by and visit when, so it’s not overwhelming. He’s got messages from Coach reminding them that their grace period from the league is up and they need to get back to playing, which—Erik isn’t sure how that’s going to work out for any of them, but at least it means that the crisis is over.

He puts the phone back on the bedside table and stretches himself out spread-eagle, trying to convince his brain to turn the panic switch off and go back to sleep. It’s three in the morning. He _needs_ to sleep. Like Coach’s message said, he has to be at an actual practice tomorrow, where he actually functions.

He knows it isn’t going to happen. He’ll lie awake for an hour, fall asleep for a few more, and wake up mid-nightmare again. This is how it goes now. This is his life.

And as much as he hates it, it’s better than the alternative, where Gabe didn’t come home at all.

God, it’s so much better than that.

**

Practice isn’t as bad as he’d feared. Coach has them start off running the drills at half-speed, and tells them he wants them to focus on form over anything else. “You’re all pros,” he says, looking out at them from the huddle after warm-ups. “I trust your muscle memory to take care of most of it. This is like coming back from bye week, that’s all. Don’t overthink it.”

Erik focuses on the slight crunch of the ice as they all shift their weight back and forth, skate blades biting down. It’s a comforting sound, one he’s known all his life. _Don’t overthink it_. That’s practically his life motto. This practice should be easy.

It is and it isn’t. Physically it’s fine. Emotionally, he can tell everybody else is thinking about the last time they skated together—a game where Gabe wasn’t there and they didn’t know why—and the practice the day after, before the FBI agents showed up—the goddamn FBI—and sat them all down for interviews. 

The guys who haven’t made it over to the hospital are asking questions to the guys who have, and everyone wants to talk to Erik, because they all just seem to assume that he’s been there the most.

They’re right, obviously, but they don’t have to be so pushy about it.

“EJ,” Coach calls into the locker room when he’s about half-changed, the process slowed down by how he has to keep swatting people and their questions away from him. “Come by my office when you have a minute.”

That gets the guys all _whispering_ , which is somehow even more annoying. “We’re not in middle school,” he says, pulling a t-shirt over his head. “I’m not getting detention. Calm down.”

“What if he’s scratching you for tomorrow?” Sam asks, folding his arms across his chest.

Erik throws his sweaty face towel at him. “Then you skate with whoever he tells you to skate with and I enjoy a night in the press box.” He looks around the room, at the concerned faces all angled toward him. “Stop it. I’m fine. Gabe is fine. We have to do our actual jobs tomorrow. Nate, make them get their shit together while I talk to Coach.”

Coach is not benching him. Coach is checking in on his general well-being, which Erik desperately wishes he would not do, because Erik’s general well-being is not great right now and he prefers to deal with that in private.

“Let me know if you do need a night off,” Coach says, giving him a sharp look before—thank god—letting his gaze fall to the notepad on his desk. “Landy’s out of the hospital, I heard.”

“Yeah. His sister took him back to his place last night.” He had read the text thread from Beatrice about eight or ten times in the dark, a few times after every nightmare. “His parents should’ve arrived while we were skating.”

“That’s good.” Coach rests his chin in his hand for a minute, and Erik realizes belatedly that he’s just as exhausted as the rest of them. “I’ll plan to stop by tomorrow, then, let them have family time today.”

“He’ll be glad to see you any time, Coach.”

“Still. His parents probably want some time with him.” He pushes the notepad away and looks at Erik again. “If you need anything, let me know, okay? Even if it’s not time off. Fewer minutes. To talk to somebody. Anything at all.”

“I will,” Erik promises. It’s not even a lie. If he had the faintest idea of what he might need, he would ask for it. But he doesn’t, which means that he’s just going to try to muddle through this on his own, like he always has, and always will.

When he gets back to the locker room, everyone is gone, so Nate must have done a good job with the pep talk. Erik sits down in his stall for a minute, looking around the empty room. 

**

The memory hits fast, and hurts.

The FBI agents—there were _FBI agents_ in their locker room, Christ—were talking, telling everyone to sit down so they can figure out an order to interview them. Erik never stood up, couldn’t get his legs under himself if he had to, so he just stays there, staring down at the floor between his stocking feet, vaguely thinking that maybe he should put his slides on, or maybe even real shoes, definitely put his skates away instead of leaving them sitting there like—

His phone went off, and every head in the room whipped around to stare. “Sorry,” Erik mumbled, reaching for it. Usually he kept his ringer turned off like a normal person, but since Gabe vanished he had been keeping it on to make sure he didn’t miss anything, even in the bathroom or driving or whatever.

He looked down at the screen to hit disconnect and almost dropped it when he saw the name on the screen. “It’s him,” he said, scrambling to accept the call instead, holding it up to his ear, blurting out “Gabe, Gabe, where are you, what the fuck.”

There was silence on the other end.

Erik yelled into the phone until one of the agents took it away from him. A lot of technical talk swirled around, none of which he listened to. The high and crash of the call and the silence were too much to sort out.

“Could be an accidental dial,” the agent said finally, handing it back to him. “But it might also mean something. We’re following up on it.”

Erik put it in his pants pocket, so he couldn’t feel the weight of it against his thigh. His head was swimming and he couldn’t stand the idea of hope, but he couldn’t seem to shut it off, either.

It happened again a few hours later, when the team interviews were finally done and he was so exhausted he could barely form words. The agents conferred again, and the one in charge handed the phone back and tells Erik to keep them posted if it happened again.

“Can you use it to find him?” Erik asked, gripping the phone like it was a sacred talisman instead of something he’s frequently considered the bane of his existence. “Trace the call back to the towers or… or whatever?”

“We can trace what towers it’s pinging without the calls. We’re already doing that. What this does it let us, potentially, reset the clock on the last known contact.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, we can run two timelines now. One where the last known contact was you seeing him leave the restaurant, in which case he’s been missing for forty-eight hours plus. And one where he’s the one making these calls, and we know he’s alive and conscious as of a minute ago.”

On a normal day Erik would have been able to follow that to a logical conclusion, but it wasn’t a normal day. “How does that affect what you do?”

“It changes what we expect to find. On the second timeline, if our perpetrators have kept him alive for forty-eight hours, they’re likely to continue doing that. We can increase the likelihood of finding him alive.”

Erik nodded slowly and peeled his fingers off the phone, letting it fall into his lap so he didn’t squeeze it til it cracked. “But if it’s not him dialing, and you go with the first timeline.” 

“Then we just don’t know.”

**

Erik puts his head down between his knees for a few minutes and concentrates on breathing. Fuck the FBI for ruining the locker room. He has to work here.

He reaches for his phone, which is back on silent now because he hasn’t let it be out of his reach since the agent handed it back to him. No calls. One message, from Beatrice, a picture of Gabe curled up on his couch in his own place, with a fluffy blanket over him. Erik knows that couch, knows that blanket. Gabe’s as comfortable as he can possibly be. 

It’s a little bit of a relief; he can relax his worry for a while. It also makes him feel sick, because all he wants is to go be there, but just like Coach, it’s not his place. 

He gets up and shoves a few things in his bag, then gives up and heads for the door. If he’s forgetting anything important, he’ll deal with it later.

**

His phone buzzes after dinner, almost making him drop his plate in the sink. He manages a controlled drop instead and hurries back to the table to check the screen, choking on the familiar rush of adrenaline and nausea.

It’s a text from Gabe, which makes him about two percent less scared. If he’s texting, he’s alive and okay. _Where are you?_

Erik drags his hand through his hair and types a non-sarcastic answer. _At home. Do you need something?_

There’s a long pause before Gabe answers, during which Erik retreats to the couch again. _No, I’m okay. Just wondered where you were._

Erik frowns at that and hits the button to call Gabe back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He sounds embarrassed, and tired, but tired is the _second_ strongest thing, which is an improvement. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“I’m not bothered. I’m worried.” It’s a permanent state of being and he’s fairly sure it doesn’t look great on him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m due for a painkiller soon but other than that I’m fine. My family has been smothering me all day.”

“They were scared, dude.”

“I know that.” Erik half expects him to sound angry, but he doesn’t. “I was scared, too.”

“No shit.” Fuck. Well. This is going just great. “I think Bednar and Sakic are going to come see you tomorrow.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m way funnier than that, dude.”

“Shit.” Gabe sighs, his breath echoing on the phone. “Maybe I’ll tell Beatrice I need an extra pill and see if I can sleep through that.”

“Whatever you need to do.” Erik lies back against the cushions, blinking at the ceiling. “But if you can talk to them and get through it okay I’ll come visit you after. Like a reward.”

He teed that up as the perfect joke; Gabe won’t even have to try to knock it out of the park with any one of a dozen variations on _You? A reward?_ He set that up as a gift.

But instead Gabe’s breath hitches a little, and when he speaks it’s wobbly. “Would you?”

“Of course.” He sits upright, looking around for his shoes. “If you need me, I’ll be there right now, Landy.”

“You don’t have to right now. It’s late, I’m gonna fall asleep when I take the pill, it’s... it’s okay. But I’d really like to see you tomorrow. If you can make it over.”

“I’ll be there,” Erik promises. “Just text me when the suits leave and I’ll come right over. Like a palette cleanser.”

That should be another easy joke tee-up, but again, Gabe doesn’t laugh. He sighs softly, instead, and says “Thank you, Erik. I really... it means a lot.”

“Of course.” Erik doesn’t remember how to not feel scared, but he does his best not to _sound_ scared, at least. Gabe doesn’t need that shit on top of everything else he’s going through. He needs his friends to have their shit together. Erik is going to have his shit together if it kills him. “Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

**

Erik doesn’t remember the order everything happened in—on the list of people the FBI was keeping up to date, he wasn’t anywhere near the top—but he remembers the agents narrowing down where they thought Gabe was being kept. They used the pings on his cell phone to triangulate off the towers around Boulder, narrowed it to outside of the city and up in the Flatirons, and then hit the brick wall of _the fucking mountains_ , with their hundreds of hidden places and rotting old cabins and forgotten driveways that didn’t lead to anything anymore.

And caves. Even if you set aside actual human-built places, there were caves. Ravines. Old mine shafts. Who even fucking knew.

The agents kept talking and Erik tuned them out, staring at his phone. It had lit up with calls from Gabe every six or eight hours for the first day and a little more, then stopped. The agents hadn’t seemed fazed by it, just said that Gabe’s battery had probably run down, and that it let them keep adjusting the clock, since the fact that the calls kept coming probably meant that it was intentional, that Gabe really was trying to signal them somehow.

“Then why isn’t he calling 911?” Erik had asked too loudly. “And why isn’t he _saying anything_?”

The agent talking to him had managed to get the point across without going into too many details, at least. Probably for the best. Erik might have thrown up on her if she’d said too much.

By the time they were talking about where they were sending search parties, though, his phone had been silent for a solid day, which felt more like a million years. He kept staring at it, and the more it said nothing, the more he wanted to smash it into pieces and then roll his truck over them. The only reason he was even at the status update where the search parties came into it was because of those calls, and now that they were over he was going to get pushed to the side and left out, and he wouldn’t know what was going on anymore, he wouldn’t know if anything happened, if...

“We’re going to start up here,” the agent in charge said, tapping at the center of the map projected on the wall. “Go out of Boulder and up into the Flatirons, outside Nederland.”

**

Erik isn’t sure exactly what the day’s timing is going to look at, so he stays in town after practice. He gets lunch, he browses a few clothing stores, he swings by a Barnes & Noble for his next plane read. He keeps his phone in his pocket so he won’t miss it when Gabe texts him. 

He’s at a hardware store pricing cabinet pulls when it finally buzzes. _I know the plan was for you to come over, but could you pick me up instead? Can we go somewhere else? I’m losing my mind._

Erik drops the pulls back into their display. _On my way._

_Thank you_.

He could make the drive to Gabe’s condo in his sleep. He parks the truck as close to the walkway leading to the door as he can and goes to knock, bracing himself to be hit by an excited Zoey.

No dog greets him, though; the door opens just on Beatrice, who is red-eyed and exhausted. “Hey,” she says, mustering a smile for him. “He says you two are going out somewhere?”

“That was the revised plan I got this morning. I think he needs some air.” He offers a careful hug, and she takes it, shaking her head a little as she leans into him. “Looks like maybe everybody needs a break.”

“We were scared, and we flew across the fucking ocean to be here. He doesn’t have to be such an asshole.” She wipes her eyes on his shoulder. “I know I’m being awful, you don’t have to tell me.”

“I know how he gets when he doesn’t feel in control.” It’s not fun for anyone involved. He squeezes her shoulders gently. “I’ll take him off your hands for a while so you guys can get some rest and regroup, okay?”

“Thank you.” She pulls back and manages a more successful smile. “If he makes our mother cry I’m gonna throw him out of his own house.”

“Understandable.” He follows her into the entryway and wipes his feet, already mentally adjusting the rough plan he came up with in the car. “Is he in his room?”

She nods and Erik heads down the hallway, poking his head into the living room just long enough to wave to the Landeskog parents. He’ll sit down and chat with them when he brings Gabe home later; right now it feels pretty imperative to get him out of here and bring the Defcon level down a little.

Gabe’s sitting on the edge of his bed, fighting with the zipper on his jacket. Erik knocks on the doorframe. “Car service.”

“I can’t get this fucking thing to zip.”

“You want some help?”

“No, I just want it to fucking zip!” He tries again, the clumsiness of his hands visible from the doorway, and Erik bites down on his tongue as it fails to catch. “Fuck!”

“You can wear it open,” Erik says, keeping his voice light. “We’ll be in the car anyway. It’s not like I’m going to take you hiking.”

The look Gabe gives him is absolutely murderous, but he gets to his feet, at least. Erik steps back and lets him into the hall first; Gabe can be in a pissy mood if he wants to, but Erik’s still going to follow him and make sure he doesn’t fall, and he can deal with it.

Gabe looks into the living room and says something in Swedish that’s echoed carefully by his parents, then shuffles down the hall to the doorway, where pairs of shoes are waiting like insurmountable obstacles. Erik clears his throat. “Where are your slides?”

Another murderous look, but Gabe nods at his hockey bag, and Erik fishes them out in silence, then steadies Gabe’s arm while he steps into them. Maybe they’ve figured out a working system, here. 

Beatrice is waiting by the door, arms crossed over her chest. “Come back in a better mood,” she says, but her voice wavers, and her eyes are watery. Gabe looks at her for a long moment and his face twists up in regret.

“Okay,” Erik says too loudly, before this can turn into crying and hugging. “You can apologize when we get back. Right now we’re getting some air. I got him, I’ll take care of him, you guys grab a nap.”

Beatrice laughs a little and pushes the door open, holding it for Gabe while he steps unsteadily onto the porch. “Yes, sir.”

“Oh no, don’t call him that.” Gabe reaches back and Erik catches him by the arm, taking his weight as they cross the porch. “It’ll give him ideas.”

“Maybe that was on purpose.” She laughs and closes the door, and Erik stops for a minute at the stairs, turning that idea around in his head.

“Don’t,” Gabe says quietly, actual amusement in his voice. “Do not.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Erik steadies him again and guides him down the stairs and along the path. “Not a word.”

He gets Gabe in the cab and buckled up, then eases the truck out of the driveway. “Are you allowed to have coffee?”

“Um.” Gabe blinks. “They didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“Great. Then we’re driving through Starbucks.” Small things, small normal things. “Your phone’s working again.”

“It’s an old one. Bea switched the SIM cards for me so I would stop asking her to text people she didn’t have numbers for.” He’s staring out the window, his voice flat and dull. Erik doesn’t know what ot do with this.

Small things. Baby steps. “My wallet’s in the console there, can you get it for me?”

Gabe frowns and twists in his seat to look for it. “Where are we going after coffee?”

“I’ve got a few ideas.” Erik switches lanes and pulls into the drive-through. “I know that what you really need is exercise, but you can’t do that, so would you rather have fresh air or somewhere quiet?”

“I’m so fucking sick of quiet, I can’t even tell you. Everybody tiptoes around me like I’m dead.”

“Shitty choice of words, there, bud. Let’s not say that part.” Erik pulls up to the speaker and yells their orders, then holds his hand out for Gabe to put money in. “I would appreciate you not saying that, at least.”

Gabe takes a deep breath and exhales through gritted teeth. “I didn’t die. I’m alive and I’m fine and I just want to get back to normal.”

“I hear you. But it’s going to take some time, and you know that, and I know you know that, so quit having tantrums about it.” He pulls up to the window and offers the cashier his biggest smile. She stares at the gap in his teeth, making this a reasonable and familiar interaction that he needs to balance out the uncomfortable territory of Gabe being this snarly and difficult. “Here you go. Keep the change.”

“I gave you a twenty,” Gabe mutters. “You tipped her like ten dollars.”

“She deserves it. Dealing with the public is hard work.” He glances at Gabe and then turns his attention back to the window. “So I’m going to assume that that was all a tangent on the way to telling me that you’d like some fresh air.”

Another deep breath from the passenger seat, and Erik can just imagine those nostrils flaring. “Yes,” Gabe says finally, as Erik accepts the coffees and passes them over to him. “Fresh air would be great.”

“Okay. I know where we’re going, then.”

“Are you going to tell me?” 

Erik pulls back into traffic, checks his merge, then fumbles around for his coffee until Gabe places it in his hand. “No, I am not.”

**

Another memory, not as sore to push on as the others: just after they technically broke up, stopped trying to be romantic, gave up sleeping together, whatever you wanted to call it, they had a PR event at a hospital in one of the suburbs. Erik doesn’t even remember which one. That part doesn’t matter.

What mattered was the comfortable silence of the ride there in the PR guy’s car, where they both played with their phones and would nudge the other every few minutes to show him something. The dumb jokes while they walked from car to lobby. The two hours of real emotion and heartbreaking stories that they were supposed to make better with a smile and a signed jersey or two, where between rooms sometimes Gabe would stop and take a deep breath and Erik would pat him on the shoulder, or Erik would stop and look out a window and Gabe would just let his hand drift carefully over his forearm, elbow to wrist.

Stupid little things. Friendly things. Comfort. Companionable silence.

As far as Erik understands it, those are what love _is_ , right there. He’s never understood how feeling butterflies or wanting to watch somebody sleep is more love than touching his shoulder just as he takes a breath and feeling him lean into the weight of your fingers.

But what does he know, anyway.

**

Gabe looks confused when he gets on the highway that runs out of Denver toward the mountains, but doesn’t say anything. He drinks his coffee, holding it awkwardly in his bandaged hands, and stares out the window at the strip malls, the ever-shrinking section of flat fields with barbed-wire fence and skeptical cows, the mall, and then the strip malls leading into Boulder. “Are we going to school?” he asks, pointing up at one of the billboards advertising the University of Colorado, all black and gold and charging herds of buffalo. “Why is it called CU instead of U of C, anyway?”

“That’s just the way they do it ‘round here.” Erik doesn’t remember this part of the drive as well as he should, but it isn’t too hard to figure out; just keep going toward the mountains and eventually the streets all narrow down to Boulder Canyon Drive and it starts to climb upward.

Gabe frowns, draining the last of his coffee. “You’re taking me back into the mountains?”

“Not really,” Erik says absently, trying to keep from creeping up on the bumper of the little hipster car in front of them. “Just one of the lookouts over the city.”

“You know this is the road to Nederland, Erik.” 

Erik’s foot slips on the pedal. Hipster-car driver is lucky he’s got hockey reflexes. “Holy Jesus shit. I forgot that part.”

Gabe starts to giggle, the sound quickly growing into a full-on hysterical burst of laughter. Erik steers the truck into a gravel wash along the mountain face and throws it in park so he can collapse against the steering wheel safely. 

“You’re taking me,” Gabe gasps, “right back to where—”

“I’m _not_! I’m taking you to the damn... the lookout, with the benches and... stop _laughing_ , oh my god.”

“I can’t.” Gabe puts his head down on the dash and wheezes. “Erik, I love you so much, you’re so stupid.”

“I am.” Erik slumps in his seat, still choking on laughter. “God, I’m dumb as shit.”

Gabe wipes his eyes. “Let’s go up to the lookout. Please. I mean it.”

“No, we don’t have to do that. I’m not trying to fucking... traumatize you or something.”

“This is the opposite of traumatizing. I promise.” Gabe turns his head to look out the back window, behind Erik, where he can see the cars going by, drivers looking at the truck in puzzlement. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“They knocked me out on the way up there.” Gabe’s voice goes a little distant, clinical. “And I was pretty out of it on the way back down. Ambulances don’t have a great view of the scenery. While I was... there, they kept me in one room, with the windows boarded up.” He very carefully doesn’t turn his gaze to Erik, just keeps watching the cars, and shrugs. “So I don’t have any bad connections to looking at the mountains, really. I’m fine coming up here.”

Erik does not want to ask the question, but he knows he should. He has to, really. He would have to be a robot to not ask. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Thank god for Gabe being just as emotionally repressed as anyone else Erik knows. “Absolutely not.”

“All righty.” Erik puts the truck back in gear and waits for the lane to clear enough for him to ease it back out. “On to the lookout.”

The view over Boulder is nice. It’s not breathtakingly gorgeous or quasi-religious like looking at the mountains themselves, but looking out at the city streets, the red stone buildings of the university, the curve of the football stadium, and the flat plain of the Front Range beyond—Erik has never gotten tired of it, as long as he’s been coming out here. It’s not an everyday thing, but this view is a good place to find perspective on his life. He needs that sometimes.

He’s never brought Gabe up here with him before, but maybe Gabe’s come up on his own. At any rate he seems to be enjoying it now, sitting on the front row of low stone benches and looking out in silence.

Erik takes a picture of him from behind and texts it to Beatrice, then tucks his phone back in his pocket and sits down next to Gabe. “Not bad, eh?”

“It’ll do.” Gabe takes a deep breath and lets it go, the exhale shaky and unsure. “God, I don’t know, Erik.”

“Don’t know what?”

“What to do? If I deserve this?” He laughs a little and wipes at his eyes with the back of his wrist, sniffing absently. “Anything, really. I’m just a mess. Forget it.”

“Hey. No.” Erik bumps his shoulder against Gabe’s, wishing he had any kind of a read on whether it would be okay to hug him or not. “First of all, if anybody has a right to be a mess? It’s you. There’s no question. You get all the votes for being a mess. Nobody is going to judge you.”

“Oh, well, thanks.” Gabe sniffles again and leans heavily into Erik’s shoulder. “What’s second of all?”

“Assuming that by if you deserve this you meant being here, getting rescued, whatever, then _yes_ , you fucking deserve it, and I’ll fight anyone who says you don’t. Including you, so if you say it again you’re going to have to square up.”

“You could drop me with one punch right now. I feel like shit.” Gabe is still leaning on him hard, and fuck having a read on the situation anyway. Erik puts his arm around Gabe’s shoulders. 

“You’re going to be okay,” he says, because he has to say something. Gabe doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t pull away. Good enough.

**

It took two and a half days of searching to narrow the field set by the cell phone towers down to a couple of old houses of questionable stability, scattered here and there in the Flatirons with Nederland at the geographical center. Technically none of them were within the town limits, though. The FBI seemed to think that anybody involved in this would give a shit about that.

Maybe it mattered to the local cops or something. Erik didn’t know. He just wanted them to get on with it. Find Gabe. Bring him home.

The other guys had been browbeaten into not showing up at the fed field office anymore, but Erik refused to accept the beatings. He would keep coming here until they either actually kicked him out, Gabe was home, or... or the third option, which he refused to acknowledge enough to name it. 

Nate sat him down at some point, probably during the search but maybe not, time was kind of a soup in Erik’s head right now. That’s his only excuse for not knowing exactly what Nate was going to say to him. 

“Go home, EJ.”

Erik stared at him for a minute, letting the words settle through the soup and then rejecting them without bothering with a response.

“This isn’t your fault and you don’t have to punish yourself for it.” Nate’s voice was tight and sharp, and Erik knew he was exhausted and angry and scared sick, too. He knew he should cut the guy some slack. He should appreciate that Nate cared about him enough to try this little... intervention, or whatever. He knew all of that. It was just that none of it _mattered_ right now. Nothing mattered but Gabe.

“EJ! Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, Nate. I’m listening.”

“Then will you please go home?”

“No.” It would be nice if it could be that easy; he says no and Nate backs off. Unfortunately nothing is very fucking nice right now.

“I swear to god I will drag you out to your truck, man.”

Erik finally looked at him, right in the eye, and he was aware that he wasn’t at his best right now in terms of mental state or physical hygiene, but the way Nate rocked back hinted that it might be worse than he thought. “I was the last one who saw him, Nate.”

“So what?”

“So I’m not giving up on this until I see him again and the last memory I’ve got in my head of him isn’t all fucked up by knowing that.”

Nate stared at him for a minute, shoulders dropping a little, and when he spoke his voice was a little less sharp. “I didn’t say anything about giving up, man. Just going home instead of sitting here punishing yourself. Getting some sleep. Maybe taking a shower.”

Erik shook his head, eyes going back to the agents and their computers and their low, know-it-all conversations. “I can’t.”

There were a few more minutes of silence. Erik knew Nate was still standing there looking at him, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Ignoring it might not have been the best plan in the world, but it was what he had.

“Any more calls?” Nate asked finally.

“No.” The silence was going to drive him crazy if nothing else did. “His battery probably went out.”

“Yeah, probably.” Nate ran his hand over his hair, looking over at the agents, and Erik concentrated his hardest on breathing without choking or breaking down.

“What if I take you to get some real food,” Nate said finally, “and then I’ll bring you back here instead of making you go home. Fair?”

Nothing about it was fair. Erik agreed anyway, because he did need to eat something that wasn’t from a vending machine, and because he didn’t actually want to fight with Nate. 

He almost fell asleep over their table at IHOP. After they ate Nate asked again, gently, if he maybe wanted to go home to sleep in a bed, for real, and Erik gave in. It was weak, on his part. It was a failure. But what was one more thing he couldn’t forgive himself for, in the middle of all of that?

**

They sit up at the lookout for an hour, until Gabe starts visibly drooping despite trying his best to hide it. Erik doesn’t say anything, just stands up and nods toward the truck, then ignores Gabe’s glaring and huffing. He holds his arm out when Gabe struggles to stand up, and ignores the grumbling about that, too. The best criteria for being someone who can deal with Gabe when he’s injured is the ability to ignore him being an asshole about it. That’s probably what his family is struggling with.

“Text your sister and ask if we should pick up food on the way,” Erik says when they’re halfway back to Denver, breaking the silence that’s held since they left the mountains. 

“Our mom is cooking,” Gabe says after a few minutes. “You’re welcome to stay. Bea says our parents would love to see you.”

“Did you ever tell them about us?” Gabe looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “You told Beatrice! I’m just asking.”

“Sisters are different.” Gabe rubs the back of his hand, frowning at the bandages. “Did you tell _your_ parents about us?”

“God, no.” Erik hits his blinker and changes lanes. “But I’m an emotionally stunted American. You Europeans are supposed to be well-adjusted and healthy and shit.”

Gabe’s quiet for a minute, looking out the window at the passing buildings. “I didn’t know how to explain us,” he says finally. “Other than just sticking with _you know, Erik, my best friend, love him to death, we get each other._ ”

“That’s sweet, Whitey.” Erik glances over at him with a smile, which Gabe returns. They fall into silence again until they’re a block away from the condo, when Erik abruptly remembers his manners. “Should we bring wine or something?”

“As much as I desperately want to mix wine and painkillers, I don’t think I’m supposed to.”

“So you can sit there with apple juice while the rest of us drink it.”

“You’re killing me,” Gabe sighs, but he nods at a parking spot outside the liquor store on the corner. “Do your worst.”

Erik parks and hesitates, his hand hovering over the keys. “Are you coming in with me?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Looking from Gabe to the liquor store and back again doesn’t make the distance between the two change at all. “Are you sure?”

“Erik.” Gabe rubs at his eyes, which drags Erik’s attention back to the dark circles under them and the pale cast to the rest of his face. Not to mention the still-dramatic bruising. “Really?”

“I feel weird about leaving you out here.” He didn’t mean to say it out loud, but apparently his filters have finally given up this far into the mess. “By yourself, I mean.”

Gabe looks caught somewhere between laughing and crying. “Erik. I promise I’ll be okay in your truck for five minutes.”

“You don’t feel weird? You’re not...” Erik casts around for another word, anything except what he means, but finally has to give in. Fuck the English language. “Scared?”

Gabe stares out the windshield for a moment, a muscle working in his jaw. “I really just want to get home,” he says finally. “Either get the wine or let’s just go, okay?”

“Yeah.” Erik forces his hand away from the keys and slides out of the truck. If Gabe can do this, he has no excuse for being weak. He can buy a mid-range red without melting down.

And he does, just barely. He expects Gabe to tease him when he comes back to the truck at a half-jog, but Gabe just leans across the cab to open the driver’s door for him and takes the bottle of wine for the rest of the drive. He holds on to it tight, like it’s something important, instead of just Erik being weird about being a dinner guest.

Dinner is quiet. Gabe is exhausted and in pain, excusing himself halfway through to go take his painkillers and crawl into bed. Erik manages to keep up awkward conversation until everyone’s done eating, then helps Beatrice clear the table. The wine never gets opened, after all that.

Beatrice walks him to the door with an apologetic smile. “I think we all need to regroup and start fresh tomorrow.”

“This is really hard for everybody.” Erik fishes in his pocket for his keys. “I have to play a hockey game tomorrow, so that’s going to be a nightmare.”

“We’ll be watching. The front office people called this morning and asked if we wanted to attend the game, all four of us, so they could have Gabe wave at the TV cameras and all that.” She shakes her head before he has to figure out how to respond to that idea using words. “He said no, thank god. None of us could handle that. But we’ll be watching from here on the couch.”

“We’re gonna win it for him.” It’s stupid, it’s barely even symbolic. They’re professionals and they know better than to think that winning or losing games really works that way, that it’s just a matter of _will_ like that. And they will all absolutely destroy themselves to make sure they win this one regardless. For Gabe. For their captain.

She tells him to drive safely and he thinks he probably does, but he doesn’t remember the drive home at all, just finds himself walking up the stairs to his house with his keys in one hand and his phone in the other, checking for a message from Gabe just out of habit, just in case.

**

The morning after they had dinner, Gabe didn’t show up to practice.

Erik wants to pretend he knew immediately that something was really, badly wrong, but the truth is he figured something was minorly, stupidly wrong. Something they would laugh about later and chirp Gabe about for the rest of the season. At the very worst, a one-game healthy scratch and Gabe having to give a contrite _I am very sorry for not being perfect_ press clip.

When the coaching staff called him in the middle of the afternoon to ask if he’d heard from Gabe, because none of their calls or texts had been returned, that was the first prickle of real worry.

He drove to Gabe’s place, punched in the lock code, and stood there holding his breath for a minute, trying to psych himself up for the idea of finding Gabe lying on the bathroom floor with a broken ankle or worse. 

The place was empty and his car wasn’t in the garage. Zoey had peed on the floor and followed him around from room to room cringing, tail tucked between her legs, hoping for absolution and her breakfast.

Erik didn’t feel _scared_ until then, and it hasn’t gone away since.

**

He doesn’t go to see Gabe between morning skate and game prep, but they text back and forth a few times. He sneaks a look at his phone just before warmups and finds a message from Beatrice with a picture of Gabe sitting on the couch in his Avs hoodie and sweatpants, a blanket pulled up to his chin.

There’s a big speech before the anthem about how grateful the team is that he’s safe and home, with thank-yous from the organization to the FBI and local police and everyone who turned out to show support. Erik deliberately didn’t go by the pile of tribute teddy bears and t-shirts and candles and homemade signs in front of the Pepsi Center, not while Gabe was gone and not now, the last night before it’ll be cleaned up and hauled away. He understands the concept of the public feeling ownership over the players. Usually he can make a space for it in his head and not feel strange about it.

This isn’t usually, and he can’t let himself look directly at it without feeling like his skull is going to rip through the top of his head and go bouncing down the hallway like the soccer ball they use for two-touch.

When the anthem starts and they look up at the flag, Erik realizes that his face is wet. Tears are still streaming out of his eyes and he didn’t even notice. Maybe the camera didn’t catch him. Maybe Gabe didn’t see it, watching on TV at home. Maybe the whole world didn’t see it. Maybe the worst that’ll come of it is the guys giving him hell on the bench.

He’s not that lucky, and the clip of him crying during the speech lights up hockey Twitter for a good hour and gets a spot in the around-the-league intermission coverage of just about every broadcast.

He won’t know that until after the game, though, when he checks his phone again, and by then he has the adrenaline rush of an overtime win to carry him through his embarrassment. He didn’t score the winning goal—he didn’t score _any_ of the goals and only managed a secondary assist—but watching from the bench when Nate knocked it home and howled up at the rafters, that was…

Well, it was pretty fucking good.

His phone is choking on notifications but he patiently sifts through them to find the only one he’s interested in, the text thread with Gabe’s face attached to it, a bad photo from a party years ago that Erik never updated, not even when they were together. Gabe’s wearing a backwards baseball cap in it. He looks like an absolute tool.

There’s one new message in the thread. _Come get me again tomorrow? I need to hug you. Promise to never say that again._

If there has ever been a time to be serious, it’s now, and Erik can’t do it. He just can’t. 

He sends back a string of emoji instead: heart-eyes, thumbs-up, trophy, car. 

Maybe Gabe knows him well enough to know what that means.

**

This time Gabe is ready when he gets there, shoes and jacket on. Beatrice helps him out the door and down the path to the driveway, but he climbs in the truck unassisted. Erik never has to turn the engine off. 

“Let’s get coffee again,” Gabe says once he’s buckled in. 

“On it.” Erik waves to Beatrice and backs out of the driveway. “Where to after that?”

Gabe leans the seat back, blinking up at the ceiling. “Let’s just go back to your place. I need a break from my family but I don’t really feel like _going_ anywhere.”

The idea that Erik’s house doesn’t count as going anywhere should be easy to make fun of. Erik should be able to latch onto it gleefully, a dog with a bone. Instead he’s tongue-tied and he swerves a little as he drives down the street, like his mind got away from his body for a minute and they’re moving at different speeds.

Gabe’s quieter today than he was when they went up to the Flatirons. He drinks his coffee slowly, cradling the cup in both hands, and sits at the end of Erik’s couch with his feet tucked up under him, looking out the big window without any focus. 

“Still arguing with the family?” Erik asks after a while. Figuring out what’s wrong through process of elimination isn’t working, so he might as well just ask.

“What? Oh. No.” Gabe sets his cup on the table and wraps his arms around himself in a loose hug. “We’re doing okay. I’m feeling a little more…” His brow furrows. “I was going to say focused, but obviously that’s not right.”

“You don’t have to be better yet.” Erik wants to touch him, give and get that hug the text promised and that Gabe seems to have forgotten. He won’t push, though. He’s never been the one who pushes, because when Gabe is pushed he digs his heels in and doesn’t move. “You can take as long as it takes.”

“This is going to sound weird.” 

Well, that makes every muscle in Erik’s neck tighten up. “Go ahead.”

“I don’t think…” Gabe hesitates, licks his lips, tries again, his eyes fixed on the window again. “I don’t think I feel as bad as I’m supposed to. I mean, I’m tired and I hurt and my hands are fucked and I hate it, but I’m not…” This time the hesitation comes with a little huff of air, frustrated and half-laughter. “I’m not having nightmares, I’m not having flashbacks or… it’s not _bothering_ me and everybody acts like it should be.” He glances down the couch at Erik, jaw tight, eyes wide with something Erik’s never seen there before, so it takes him a minute to recognize it as fear. 

“What’s wrong with me that I don’t feel that bad?” Gabe asks, low and unsure and suddenly sounding so young again, so much that Erik can see Gabe’s rookie self sitting there looking at him like Erik can make it all make sense. 

Not make it better, of course; nobody ever accused Erik of being able to do that. But he usually can at least manage some sense.

“I don’t think anything’s wrong with you,” he says. Gotta say that first, gotta try to get Gabe’s shoulders to relax a bit and get some of the fear out of his eyes. “I mean, what you said yesterday in Boulder, that’s... that’s feeling bad, dude. I think, like, right now your brain is all relieved, right? It knows you’re safe. Maybe it’s kind of enjoying that for a while before it deals with the other shit.”

Gabe shifts in his seat, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them. “Like what?”

“I mean.” Erik is not a fucking psychiatrist. He can’t even spell it. “They kidnapped you and beat you up and broke your fingers, dude. That’s stuff to deal with. They hurt you. They held you at gunpoint, right?”

“I don’t remember.”

Erik takes a careful breath, making himself hold it in his lungs for a beat before he lets it go. “Well, the cops and the agents said there were a lot of guns in the house. And knives. So…”

“I do remember a knife. I think.” Gabe’s back curls, like his body is trying to fold in on itself of its own volition, making itself into a shell. 

“Maybe your brain is trying to let you get some rest before it brings it all back up. You have to baseline recover before you can start rehab, you know? Can’t do PT while the injury is still fucked.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Gabe’s mouth opens wider and he breathes like he’s drinking the air, gulping it down. “I think…”

Erik crawls down the couch to him and wraps him up in his arms. He’ll stop if Gabe asks him to but he can’t just look anymore, not when Gabe can’t breathe, not when he’s scared and looking so alone with Erik _right there_.

Gabe doesn’t crumble into him, he melts, head fitting to Erik’s shoulder and body against his chest, and Erik steadies him for maybe a minute, maybe a long time. Gabe isn’t crying, but he’s gasping for air, shaking, his muscles clenched tight and braced to fight something that isn’t here but that it expects to attack him at any moment.

“You’re okay,” Erik says over and over again, just above a whisper, right against Gabe’s ear. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. I’m right here.”

“Fuck,” Gabe says eventually, his voice wobbling. He doesn’t pull back, just lifts his head, and tries for a laugh. “Is this how they all want me to feel? This is awful.”

“Nobody wants it.” The last impulse worked out okay, so Erik lets himself have another one and frees one arm to brush Gabe’s hair off his forehead. “But I think it’s probably pretty normal.”

“I hate it.” Gabe takes a slower breath, shaking his head. “Fuck.”

“You’re safe here.” Erik knows he should let go of him and let him breathe, but his body is ignoring his good sense. It wants to hold on for as long as possible.

“I want to go back to normal. I want to skate, and play, and I want my house back, and my dog back, and just...” He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, and Erik can see him pulling himself back together by sheer force of will. “No point whining about it, I guess.”

“You’re not whining.” It’s Erik’s turn to shake his head. “I’m gonna get you some water.”

“Fine.” One of them has to pull away for that to happen, though, and at first neither of them moves. Erik still can’t make himself do it, and in the end, Gabe edges to the end of the couch, arms protectively wrapped around himself again, a confused look on his face. Erik makes his tactical retreat to the kitchen and braces himself on the edge of the sink, allowing himself a silent scream of frustration directed toward the drain.

Gabe is back and he’s safe and he’s going to get better. This shouldn’t be so hard.

He texts Beatrice while he fills two glasses with ice and water. _I think Gabe might crash here. I’ll bring him back first thing in the morning._

There’s a long pause before she answers. _He has an appointment at 9._

_I’ll have him home by 8._

“So I’m keeping you overnight,” he says when he hands over Gabe’s water. “Already talked to Beatrice about it, you’ll be back in plenty of time to get to your appointment, I’ll get to practice early and hit the weight room. Everyone’s happy.”

Gabe stares at him for a moment, then takes a small sip. “I don’t know if this is happy or not, but I guess I won’t bother arguing with you.”

Erik knows the tone of voice under the grumpy words: Gabe is extremely relieved to not have to go home. Someone should probably chase down and sort out the why of that with him. It’s not going to be Erik. He has a hunch about a few things that will help, and tonight will let him test that theory. 

“You didn’t bring your pills with you, did you?” he asks, and Gabe’s face falls, because of course not. “Well, luckily I’ve got plenty. All sizes, brands, and dosages. Take your pick.”

Gabe rolls his eyes, but he grins, too. “I’ll just have to double up the antibiotics in the morning.”

“See? We know what we’re doing.” He lays his arm along the back of the couch, making a space that Gabe can fit into without explicitly inviting him into it. Gabe can decide for himself what he wants to do.

He’s pressed up to Erik’s side by the next commercial break, and Erik’s pretty sure that the knowing-each-other-too-well goes both ways, so that Gabe knows exactly how relieved he is about that.

**

The house they targeted outside Nederland was—well, for one thing, calling it a house was generous. It was a house when it was built. It was the remains of a house now, one that had taken a beating from Colorado winters and Colorado summer fires.

A few rooms were still intact, though, and infrared scans said there were people in them, three people who moved around a lot and one who didn’t move much at all. 

The scans freaked Erik out a lot, frankly; if someone was watching his house with that and saw exactly how much time he spends on the couch, he would be deeply embarrassed and fairly pissed off. He wasn’t sure if swallowing your principles about privacy was ever a good thing, even in a case like this, but that was an ethical question he would wrestle with once Gabe was safe and home. If that not-moving-much person _was_ Gabe after all. He hoped it was, and he hoped it wasn’t, because some part of him still wanted this to be a wild, elaborate practical joke Gabe was playing on all of them. 

It wasn’t, though, and Gabe being a not-moving-much shape that was _still giving off body heat_ was the best option of the available ones. They knew where that shape was. They could go in after it.

The team that went into the house wore body cameras. Erik stood at the back of the room at the FBI’s base camp in Boulder, which they hadn’t kicked him out of yet, and watched the camera footage on the screens up against the wall.

**

Gabe insists on sleeping in the guest room. Erik lies awake and waits. Two hours after they went to bed, his door opens and Gabe creeps in, comforter wrapped around his shoulders.

“Erik?” he asks softly.

Erik lifts the blanket next to him. “Yeah, jackass. Get in here.”

“Shut up.” Gabe crawls in and leaves his comforter as a second layer over them both; it gets oppressively warm very quickly but Erik doesn’t bother pushing it away. It’s a double shell of protection against monsters under the bed. And Gabe falls asleep next to him in what feels like a minute, just like he thought he would.

In the morning Erik keeps his voice casual, not looking directly at Gabe, doing his very best _not a big deal_ setup for everything. “I think I can swing by Nate’s after practice and then by yours on my way home, if you want.”

Gabe’s forehead furrows up. “Why?”

“Bring you your dog back.” Erik waits a beat for Gabe’s face to light up, then shrugs. “If you want her, I mean. Based on last night’s snuggle action, you seem like you might need a warm body sleeping with you and I don’t think Beatrice is going to volunteer.”

He offered that up on a platter so it could just be a joke, but Gabe is _looking_ at him, eyes wide and warm and full of his whole heart. Erik wants to fucking glow. He’s good at being a friend to Gabe, see? He’s good at Gabe.

“I think that would help a lot.” Gabe’s voice only wobbles a little bit. “If you’re sure you don’t mind picking her up.”

“No problem. She’s my buddy.” Erik jerks his head toward the front door. “Let’s get you home and you can count down to Zoey time, eh?”

That earns him an eye-roll and muttering about how he’s not a _child_ , but Gabe’s smiling, too, and he doesn’t look quite so damn sad, and Erik is very comfortable with giving himself a mental high-five and taking the win.

**

Gabe had been missing for coming up on forty-eight hours, and the Avs had to play.

Erik sat at his stall, staring down at his skates, vaguely aware that the room was quiet and that he should probably do something about that. He lifted his head a little and found Nate staring at him, eyebrows lifted, silently asking if Erik was going to talk or if he should. Erik shrugged back. It didn’t really matter, did it?

Nate’s jaw tightened into a pissed-off line, and Erik knew he would probably pay for that later, but Nate also got to his feet and gave the requisite little pep talk. _C’mon, boys, just focus on the game. We can’t do anything about Gabe—about the other thing right now. All we can do is do our best and let the cops handle that. Maybe there’ll be news after. We’ll go out and win this one for him. C’mon. C’mon._

Erik’s stomach was sore and sour, his head foggy and a little light. He missed the puck off Mikko taking the drop; it came skittering right toward him and then right past him, and he watched it go, then got fucking flattened by the other team storming past after it. He lost his man on the next two matchups. He was cordially invited to keep his ass on the bench for most of the rest of the period.

Nobody gave him shit about it, really. Nobody else was doing any better. Even Coach was green around the edges and a beat slow on everything.

They lost 4-0 and the crowd didn’t even seem mad about it, honestly. They held up _We heart you, Landy_ signs and drifted out to the concourse while Erik stomped back to the locker room, pulled his phone out from his bag, and stared at it like it would have answers.

Sakic came down to the locker room after they were mostly changed but before anyone had left and let them know that Toronto gave approval to cancel at least the next game, and maybe the one after that. It would be hell later in the season when they had to make those up, but Erik wasn’t thinking that far ahead. 

He followed Nate back to his house and stood in the driveway under the security light until Nate came back out of the garage.

“Get your head out of your ass, EJ,” Nate said.

“What if he’s—” Erik choked on the words, couldn’t get them out, but Nate could hear them anyway. His face went chalky and then red in the way that meant an ass-kicking was coming, so Erik tried to shove him first, but Nate hit him like a charging bull and knocked him back, flat on the driveway, and Erik—

Well, he put his hands up in surrender and Nate wasn’t too mad to accept it. They went in the house and got ugly-drunk on bottles of fancy liquor that Nate kept around but didn’t normally drink in-season, and in the morning Erik woke up with a dry mouth, a pounding head, and a missed call on his phone telling him that the FBI was going to come by and talk to all of the guys on the team after practice.

**

They leave on a two-game roadie the morning after Erik brings Zoey home. Packing for it feels bizarre and alien—how can he leave when he might be needed, when he would be too far away to come running? 

Nobody gives him the option of not going, and nobody asks him if he was okay, so he sits alone on the plane and chews his way through an entire pack of gum, staring blankly at the book he’d bought that day while he waited for Gabe to call.

When they land in Missouri, Sam falls in step with him on the way to the bus. “Ready?” he asks quietly, and Erik shrugs, throwing his arm around Sam’s shoulders a little less naturally than he usually would.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Sam shakes his head. “Need your head in the game tonight.”

“My head is right here.”

That earns him a flat-out eyeroll, and Sam bumps his body against Erik’s, though without dislodging his arm. “Text Landy so you have proof he’s okay and you won’t worry the whole time.”

Erik lets his arm flop to his side. “I don’t need to text him.”

“Do it anyway. He’ll tell you to focus and you won’t yell at him like if the rest of us tell you.”

“I never yell at any of you. You’re my beloved, stupid children.”

Sam elbows him sharply in the ribs and drops back out of step, looking over his shoulder for Mikko. “Just text him! You won’t feel better until you do!”

Erik hates it when the kids are right. He might just hate the kids in general, honestly, but it’s not time to dig into that right now.

He holds out until he’s in his seat on the bus, but then he does take his phone out of his pocket, thumb it out of airplane mode, and send a text to Gabe. _Landed in STL._

Gabe sends back a thumbs-up emoji and a picture of Zoey curled up on his bed, her tail a happy blur that makes Erik grin just looking at it.

_Sleeping better with her home?_ he asks, adding a heart-eyes face to the end.

_A lot better_ , comes the answer. _I think she’s cheering Beatrice and my parents up too. Good idea bringing her home, thank you._

_No problem._ Erik hesitates; he should leave Gabe alone, but he feels like he has more to say. It’s just a feeling without any actual accompanying words to type. He finally settles on _Gonna win this one for you too_ , with a winking face that he immediately regrets including.

Gabe sends back a string of smiling-blushing faces alternating with crying-laughing ones, which Erik doesn’t understand at all. He puts his phone back in his pocket and swears to himself he’s not going to look at it again until after the game.

He does feel a little bit better, though. Fuck Sam for knowing he would.

They lose, but it’s not an embarrassing showing and he doesn’t make a fool of himself. When he checks his phone again there are three texts from Gabe, one for each period, calling out something he did well. 

“You coming to dinner?” Sam asks, leaning in close enough to squint at the screen. “Landy? Tell him we all say hi.”

“Tell him yourself, you have your own phone and there’s a damn group chat.” Erik shoves his phone back into his coat pocket fast, his face hot. The texts aren’t anything private, for all he knows Gabe sent similar little bite-sized bits of praise to everyone on the team, but still, they’re his. Back off, Sam.

“I will. Are you coming to dinner or not?”

Erik rubs his face “I... no, I’m just gonna get room service and lie down.” He can feel Sam’s disapproval without looking. “Is that a problem?”

“We’re not supposed to let you isolate yourself.” _That_ makes him look, and Sam shrugs calmly. “Dogg said.”

“Tell him to mind his own business.” Erik finishes shoving his gear into its bag and heaves it onto his shoulder, looking around for the equipment managers’ cart. “I’ll see you at bus call tomorrow morning.”

“EJ...”

Erik ignores him and takes his bag to the cart, gives the whole equipment staff high-fives, and then retreats to the bus. If Nate wants to make things weird for him, and deputize Sam into it too, then he’s going to have a work a lot harder. Erik is a long-time master of avoiding this shit. 

Nate doesn’t catch him on the bus, but he’s only in his room for about two minutes, doesn’t even have his pants off yet, when Nate’s pounding on the door. “EJ. You’re coming to dinner.”

“Go away,” Erik calls back, but he puts his phone in his pocket instead of tossing it onto the bed. Nate has a tendency to get what he wants, because if he doesn’t get it by asking he’ll start bullying instead and he’s about the size of a damn house.

“Open the door.”

Erik jerks it open and glares at him, then raises his eyebrows in exaggerated questioning. “What?”

“You’re coming to dinner.”

“I don’t want to come to dinner.”

“EJ. Jesus Christ.” Nate pushes him back enough to come into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. “I don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, dude.”

“What does that have to do with dinner?”

Nate grabs him by the shoulders and steers him over to the mirror hanging on one wall. “Okay, we can do it this way.”

Erik stares at his reflection for a moment, but whatever Nate’s so worked up about, he doesn’t see it. “I guess I could use a haircut?”

“Oh my god.” Nate groans and lets his head fall on Erik’s shoulder, which hurts. If Nate’s a house, his head is a cinderblock. “You look like a fucking zombie, man.”

“No I don’t.” There are some shadows under his eyes and maybe he’s a little thinner than when he started the season, but that makes sense. That’s how it goes. “I’m fine, Nate.”

“You haven’t been normal since Gabe went missing.” That’s probably Nate’s trying-to-be-gentle voice, but Erik flinches away from it anyway, trying to get Nate’s hands off him. “He’s back now and he’s okay and you need to be normal again.”

“What does _normal_ mean, anyway, you know? As a philosophical concept—” He’s made it out of Nate’s reach, but the look Nate gives him is plenty murderous. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but—”

“Then just come to dinner to make me feel better. Eat. Talk to us like you don’t hate us.”

That pulls Erik up short. He blinks. “Of course I don’t hate you, what the hell?”

“Maybe that’s an exaggeration.” Nate folds his arms across his chest and shrugs. “Talk to us like you give a fuck that we’re there? I don’t know, man, like I said, you haven’t been normal since it happened, but it’s over now, and we all just want you back.”

It’s on the tip of Erik’s tongue to say something nasty—Gabe isn’t back yet either, not with the team, shouldn’t they be a little more worried about that than about Erik’s mood and whether or not he’s handing out kisses?—but a beat before he can say anything, he realizes that maybe that’s the whole point. They can miss Erik or they can miss Gabe, but missing both at once is too much.

Fuck.

“Okay,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender, and Nate’s shoulders relax. He smiles. Yeah, good thing Erik untangled that knot instead of being a dick and making things worse. “I’ll come to dinner. Where are we going? No, don’t tell me, just lead the way. I’ll be good, I promise.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Nate grumbles, and he holds the door for Erik as they go out into the hall again, back to the elevator, back to the lobby, back out into the street together.

**

Gabe asked him once, while they were together or whatever it was, how the way Erik loved him was different than the way he loved Nate, or Tyson, or his best friend when he was a kid.

“I hate this question,” Erik sighed, flopping over sideways on the couch, away from Gabe. “Why do you have to ask me that?”

“I’m curious! That’s all, just curious. You see the world differently than I do. I want to understand it better.” Gabe was looking at him closely, all wide blue eyes like he was sincere, like he really did want to know. Blond hair flopping over his forehead. Something out of a movie.

“You’re you and Nate is Nate and Tyse is Tyse and I haven’t talked to my childhood best friend in years,” Erik said finally, shifting around so he didn’t have to look at Gabe directly. “I feel differently about all of you.”

“How do you know the difference isn’t romantic love, though?” Gabe put his hand up before Erik could snap. “Again, just asking, not accusing you of anything.”

“Ugh.” Erik rubbed his face against the couch and closed his eyes altogether to eliminate all risk of looking at Gabe. “How does anybody know the difference with stuff? It’s if it matches what everybody says it means or not. Mine doesn’t match what people say when they say love. It doesn’t match movies, or TV, or songs, or... whatever. I don’t feel that _thing_ people talk about.”

He stopped, swallowed. It was so hard, explaining this. It's easier just to let people assume it means he’s a freak who didn’t get the full emotional software install, or something. “But I want to be around you. More than with Nate or Tyse. You’re just... _more_. And I want to have sex with you, that’s different.” He swallowed again. It _hurt_ , ripping all of this out of his chest and putting it in words. “You’re the person I would choose first, if I have a choice. For anything.” 

There was silence, and he opened one eye. “Does that make sense? Gabe?”

Gabe was looking at him like Erik was a sunrise, and kissed him like Erik was his first choice, too, so it must’ve made sense somehow. And he didn’t ask that question anymore, thank god.

**

They have a practice the morning after they get back from the roadie, just a low-key skate and a few drills. Erik gets to the rink a few minutes later than he likes to—traffic combined with not being able to find the socks he wanted—and so he’s already not at his best when he gets into the locker room. If he’s the last one on the ice and he has to do extras while everyone laughs at him, he’s going to punch someone in the face.

He runs right into Z’s back when he opens the locker room door, though, which isn’t normal. Everyone should be moving toward the ice by now. “What’s going on?” he asks, trying to shove Z out of his way with little to no success. “What are you all standing around for? Move.”

“That’s no way to treat your captain, EJ,” Josty laughs, and Erik finally manages to get around Z and see for himself that yeah, Gabe is sitting in his stall, skates on, big shit-eating grin on his face. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” Erik throws his bag aside and goes over to squat down next to Gabe—not even thinking, not until the guys start laughing again, but whatever, fuck them. “You’re supposed to be resting, recovering, definitely not _practicing_.”

“I’m not here for the whole practice,” Gabe said, holding his hands up placatingly. Or at least it’s probably supposed to be placating, but showing Erik the bandages like that just makes him more determined to get Gabe in a car and on the way back to his couch. “Erik, I’m fine, I’m just going to skate a lap or two and say hi to everybody. I was going stir-crazy at home. My parents and Beatrice brought me over, don’t worry, they won’t let me be stupid.”

“I’m glad somebody can keep you from being stupid.” Erik gets to his feet again, and he knows he’s staring openly, probably to the point of ogling the guy, but he can’t help it. Gabe’s wearing a hoodie and track pants, hiding most of his injuries. All Erik can see are the bandaged hands and the bruise at the orbit of his eye, fading into a nasty purple-brown.

“You need to get changed,” Gabe says, giving him a pointed look. “But I need to talk to you after, so don’t take off too fast, okay?”

“Oh, I definitely have some things to say to you.” Someone moved Erik’s bag from its random landing point to his stall, which is slim proof that maybe his team isn’t entirely made up of assholes. He changes as fast as he can but he’s still the last one on the ice by far, and Bednar sends him on a three-lap punishment skate for it, with everyone hollering and catcalling him the whole time.

Gabe skates slow loops at the end away from everyone else while Erik drags ass around the rink. He doesn’t catcall, he just _grins_. 

To be fair, Erik can’t stop smiling either. This is almost like things are okay.

Gabe leaves the ice once the team starts running drills, and Erik manages to put him out of his mind and concentrate on what he’s doing. A few glances up while they practice reassure him that Gabe’s sitting with his family, watching the team and pointing out things here and there. He catches Erik looking once and sticks his tongue out at him. 

Erik can breathe. His lungs fill all the way. It’s a nice change of pace, honestly. 

After practice, Gabe is in the locker room again, shit-talking with everybody. He doesn’t come looking for Erik until after Erik has showered and changed and is putting his shoes on, humming to himself in his stall.

“Hey.” Gabe drops onto the bench next to him. “Got a minute?”

“For you? I’ve got five.” 

The joke seems to go right past Gabe; he just nods, shooting a distracted look around the room. “I’ll walk you out to your car. Mom and Dad and Beatrice went to get coffee and they’re coming back for me.”

“Leaving you unsupervised. You must be doing better.”

Gabe doesn’t laugh at that, either, and Erik’s internal alarm system is too exhausted to send up a full alert, but... yeah, that’s at least a flashing light and some beeping. “Kind of,” Gabe says finally, and Erik bites back a sigh before getting to his feet.

“Let’s get out of here so you’ll start talking,” he says, and Gabe falls in step with him without arguing, then obediently starts spilling his guts once they hit the parking lot.

“I told them to go home.” Erik misses a step and Gabe winces. “I know, I know, that sounds... bad.”

“It sounds really bad. It sounds like you’re being a dick.”

“It’s not to be a dick. It’s just that they’re not... they’re not helping.”

Erik is parked out in the goddamn boondocks, comparatively, because he was late, so there’s a decent amount of time for him to roll that around in his head. He doesn’t say anything until he’s thrown his bag in the truck and turned to face Gabe across the truck bed. “They’re not helping, how?”

Gabe shoves his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and shrugs. “They’re just not.”

“They’re cooking for you and cleaning up after you and taking you to your appointments. You can’t drive yourself, remember? Your hands don’t fucking work.”

Red rises in Gabe’s face at that, and yeah, maybe Erik was a little too blunt, but that’s what the team keeps him around for, isn’t it? “I could take Ubers or something to the hospital.”

“Oh, well, then forget all that other stuff. And forget them being _worried_ about you.”

“Erik! Jesus Christ.” Gabe tilts his head back and takes a deep breath, then exhales up toward the sky. “Think about it. If you were hurt, would you want your family staying with you, hovering over you? Would you feel like you could... deal with your shit, in that situation?”

Erik really badly needs to kick something, and the truck tire is right there. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“They’re in Minnesota, not Sweden.”

“I don’t think that really makes a difference to parents.” Erik’s got nothing for that, so he just stands there, and after a minute Gabe goes on. “I love them. I know they love me. I know they’re scared and hurt, and... everything. I wish I didn’t feel this way. But I do, and I need space, and that’s just... where I’m at.”

Erik kicks the tire again, harder. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, like, okay, you told me. It’s not like I’m the boss of you. I can’t tell you what to do. If that’s what you need, then do it. I won’t stop Beatrice from killing you if it makes your mom cry, but I’m not gonna tell you not to do what you need to do.”

Gabe exhales slowly again. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s just one other thing.”

Knew it, knew it, fucking... knew it. “Yeah?”

“Well.” Gabe’s face has gone pink now, all over. He’s very readable that way. Not as much as Nate, but close. “You are right that I can’t stay by myself. And if they’re going home, that means...” 

Erik studies him for a minute. “You’re asking if you can move in with me for a while?”

“Well, I was hoping you would move in with _me_.”

“Are you going to make a case for it, or even actually ask, or are you just going to...?”

“My god, you are an asshole.” Gabe glares at him across the truck bed. “Erik, will you stay with me while I finish recovering? Just to give me a hand with stuff. You don’t have to drive me to appointments or spoon-feed me or wipe my ass, I promise.”

Erik nods slowly. “What about shared showers?”

“With you, I don’t know if the correct answer is yes or no.”

“I don’t know either.” He can see Gabe’s car pulling back into the lot, Beatrice behind the wheel. “Your ride is here. And yeah, I’ll come stay.”

Gabe’s shoulders drop in relief. “Thank you.”

“I’ll put it on your tab of all the things you owe me.” That comes out harsher than he intended, and he sees a flicker of doubt in Gabe’s eyes. Shit. Why does that hit him in the gut so hard? There’s no reason for it. “Joking, Whitey. Just tell me when to show up.”

“I’ll let you know once we get their flights settled.” Gabe looks over his shoulder at the car, then back to Erik. “Seriously, thank you. It means a lot to me. I don’t think you know.”

Why does _that_ hit him in the gut so hard, too? Fuck. His guts are a mess over Gabe Landeskog, and they shouldn’t be, not in this day and age. 

“I’ll talk to you later, then,” he says, putting himself through the motions of opening the truck door. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Gabe echoes, and Erik keeps his head down, not looking until he can’t hear the other engine anymore and he’s sure he’s alone out here.

**

Temporarily relocating to Gabe’s house isn’t a fun sleepover thing, obviously. They’re both adults with responsibilities and they both need a lot of sleep to function—Gabe because he’s healing right now, and Erik because he is playing hockey at the professional level, contrary to any jokes that his teammates and coach care to make.

He does end up driving Gabe to an appointment, the second day after he brings his stuff over, because it’s a rest day and it’s stupid for Gabe to take an Uber if he doesn’t have to. It’s a consult with an orthopedic surgeon about his hands, and while Erik obviously stays in the waiting room instead of butting in on Gabe’s confidential medical shit, when Gabe comes out almost smiling he doesn’t hesitate to demand answers.

“Cautiously optimistic,” Gabe says once they’re safely in the truck. “So that’s better than I was afraid of, not as good as I hoped.”

“I think cautiously optimistic is worth celebrating, for sure. It’s definitely better than ‘there’s nothing we can do for you, Mr. Landeskog.’”

“God.” Gabe lets his head flop back against the passenger seat. “That’s what I was sure she was going to say. I’ve been so stressed about it.”

“Well, relax a little bit, then.” Erik almost makes the turn that would take him back to his own house, but catches himself in time. “You need to quit stressing or you’ll never get back to 100%.”

“It’s hard.” Gabe’s voice drops down soft, like he’s talking to himself more than Erik. “I think I _am_ back to 100%, until I try to actually do something strenuous and my whole body shuts down. There’s no reason for it. Nothing’s broken. Nothing’s actually healing. It’s just...”

“Your brain is a real thing.” Erik has to keep his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, which is the only thing keeping him from grabbing Gabe by the shirt collar and dragging him in close to _make_ him understand. Which would probably be counterproductive, so, thanks, truck. “You can tell by the size of your head. It needs time and sleep and shit like that to get better, too. So stop freaking out.”

“It’s _hard_ , Erik.” Gabe’s voice is still small, still lost, and now Erik wants to hug him, not drag him around like a kitten, but he can’t do that, either.

“You can’t play again until your hands are better,” he says instead. “So you might as well rest through the time that takes instead of freaking out. You’re not being kept off the ice by being tired. You’re being kept off by your hands. Okay?”

“I could still be getting back in the gym for endurance and core strength,” Gabe mutters, but he puts his hand up before Erik can retaliate. “But I know you’re right. I hear what you’re saying. I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” Erik takes a deep breath and turns onto Gabe’s street. “I appreciate that.”

“When we get inside I’ll take a pill and a nap.” Gabe half-smiles, looking out the window at where a woman is walking a dog about Zoey’s size down the sidewalk. “You want in on that?”

“Definitely.” Probably he should tell Gabe to go easy on the pills; probably he shouldn’t cheerfully accept offers to share them when he’s not actively injured. But a defenseman is always in pain at some level or another, and caring about hitting the painkillers too hard is so, so far from Erik’s primary concern right now. Or Gabe’s, for that matter, from what he can tell. Getting mildly buzzed and taking a nap sounds like a perfect afternoon.

The guest rooms are in an entirely separate hallway from the master suite, giving Gabe the privacy of a king. Erik makes sure Gabe and Zoey are settled, then pops his bitter-tasting candy and chases it down with a water before crawling into the bed he’s taken over for the duration. It’s just the right level of firmness and swathed in what feels like two feet of fluffy blankets; he drops off fast and deep.

He wakes up to Zoey whining and licking at his hand. When he opens his bleary eyes and looks at her, she wags frantically, then turns and trots to the half-open door, looks back at him, and whines again. Dog body language is helpful and clear. He drags himself out from under the blankets, shakes the worst of the fog out of his head, and follows her to Gabe’s room.

Gabe’s sitting up in bed, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking, and Erik doesn’t think, just moves, climbing in beside him and wrapping him up in both arms. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Gabe _sobs_ , fully and unrestrained, and Erik bites down hard on his tongue. Better to just be here, just hold him, than to risk saying the wrong thing, so that’s what he does. Gabe is facing away from him, still, so the tears don’t soak his shirt or anything, but they run down Gabe’s face and drip uncomfortably onto Erik’s arm. It’s not worth moving for; all that matters is being here for Gabe, being a rock or a tree or a wall or something else solid that can hold him up until he cries it out. Zoey curls up at the foot of the bed, nose to tail in a tiny circle that lets her watch them with wide eyes, and Erik tries to give her reassuring eye contact. Good girl, coming to get him. Very good girl.

“Fuck,” Gabe says finally, his voice raw and wet. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Erik shakes his head and loosens his hold enough that Gabe can pull away if he wants to but isn’t being cut loose. “I’m here.”

“Just a nightmare.”

“I thought you weren’t having nightmares.”

“I wasn’t.” Gabe half-shrugs. “Now I am.”

Erik takes a deep breath and lets it go. “That sucks.” 

Gabe laughs a little and nods, turning his head to wipe his eyes on the sleeve of his t-shirt. “It does, yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Just asking makes Erik’s heartrate pick up, because—yeah, he’s here to listen if Gabe wants to talk, absolutely, no matter what, but that doesn’t mean he’s sure he’s _ready_ to hear whatever might come out of his mouth. Erik’s never experienced anything like that. He doesn’t know if his brain can handle hearing it. But if Gabe could handle going through it, he isn’t going to look away. He can’t.

Gabe exhales slowly, a miserable sound that’s thick with snot and weariness. “Just... still being there. Like all this was a dream or I imagined it or something. And I woke up still there and they were all still there, waiting for me, and I knew I was never getting out. I would never see anybody who cared about me again. I would just die there with these people who just...” 

He stops and gags, then pulls out of Erik’s arms to bolt for the en-suite. Erik presses the heels of his hands over his eyes for a moment, then follows. He finds a washcloth in the cabinet, wets it with cool water, hands it to Gabe once he finishes retching into the toilet.

“You’re not dreaming,” he says, his voice steadier than he expects. “I’ll pinch you if you want. You’re safe, and they’re in custody, and you’re not going to die.”

Gabe wipes his face and then holds the cloth over it for a moment, hiding his face. “Thanks.”

“I will pinch you as many times as you need.”

A rough laugh, breaking a little but not fully into a sob. “I don’t think I need that. But thank you.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Gabe’s breath hitches behind the washcloth and Erik mentally kicks himself halfway back to Minnesota. “It’s okay to say no, I’m not gonna...”

Gabe pulls the cloth away and wads it up in his fist. “Can I get some water first and then hear it?”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Erik offers both hands and Gabe takes them, washcloth falling to the floor in the process. They shuffle to the kitchen and Erik gets them each a glass of water.

Gabe drinks half of his, rubs at his eyes, then nods. “Okay. Shoot.”

“You kept calling me. From there.” Erik hesitates, the sheer number of questions getting tangled in his throat before he manages, “Why me? And why didn’t you say anything?”

Gabe blinks a few times, staring down at the table. “Oh. That.”

At least things aren’t so fucked up that Erik can’t feel the urgent desire to throw a chair at that man. “Yeah, that. The phone thing.”

Gabe takes a careful drink, his brow furrowing. “I had my phone on airplane mode while we were at dinner. I always do, so I’m not looking at it the whole time and ignoring people like an asshole.”

Erik knows Gabe did that with other people—he had the evenings of ignored texts to prove it—but it never occurred to him that he did it when they went out, too. “Okay.”

“They found it when we got to the... house, the room. They broke the screen.” Gabe gestures vaguely, like maybe Erik doesn’t know how a phone screen works. “I think maybe they stepped on it. When I woke up it was broken. But some parts of the screen still worked, right? You know how they are.”

Erik has broken many phone screens in his time. “Yeah. You can control like two things, depending on where there’s glass left.”

“Right.” Gabe rubs the back of his neck, twisting in his chair like he’s trying to pull away, to find a safe place. Erik should tell him to forget it, should drop this whole thing. Wanting to know isn’t worth hurting him.

But he doesn’t say anything, because he’s a coward.

“I had to wait til they left me alone, but I figured out I could turn off airplane mode. I still had battery, because it hadn’t been getting updates and messages and stuff, right? All the texts came in, but I couldn’t open them or type anything, and it said I had a million missed calls but I couldn’t dial it.” He shakes his head. “I just kinda kept tapping on the part of the screen I could make work, right? I got the phone app open, and if you hit the dial button it’ll redial the last number you called.”

Erik blinks. “And that was me?”

“Yeah.” Gabe shrugs, his body drooping over the table. “I called you when we were leaving the arena, remember? I remembered there was construction by the place I’d said we should go, and I said you could pick instead.”

“So...” Erik’s chest hurts. “So you just kept redialing me?”

“When I could. When I was alone.” Gabe takes another drink and then pushes the glass away. “I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t want them to hear me, but I figured maybe they could trace the call back to the tower, or something. I thought maybe it would help.”

“They were tracing the pings anyway,” Erik says, staring at Gabe’s hand flat on the table, bandages and tape white on pale skin. “But the calls let us figure out the timeline, like... that if you were the one making them, it meant you were still alive and they didn’t just leave you in a ditch somewhere.”

Gabe makes a choked, sobby sound that might have started as a laugh. “Jesus. Glad to help with that, I guess.”

They sit there for a few minutes, looking at anything but each other, breathing ragged. Zoey circles the table, ears flat with anxiety, tail tucked. Erik finally gets up and lets her outside.

“I don’t think that’s her problem,” Gabe says, which is definitely right, but Erik doesn’t know what else to do.

“You want to go lie down again?” he asks finally. “Let her cuddle you? Take a couple more pills and pass out?”

Gabe’s smile is wobbly but real. “Yeah. That sounds good. We all need to eat at some point, though.”

“I’ll set an alarm and order something.”

“Okay.” Gabe gets to his feet carefully, his hands visibly shaking even from EJ’s place by the door. 

“Gabe?” he asks, then falls silent when Gabe looks at him. He doesn’t have a question.

Maybe Gabe knows him pretty well. “You maybe want to lie down with me and Zoey?” he asks quietly. “Make it a little cozier for her.”

God please give him the strength to make a joke. “For her, eh?”

Gabe reaches past him to open the door. “For all of us, I guess. C’mon, pretty girl. I’m sorry. Let’s go lie down again.”

Erik follows them down the hall, wishing his head would stop spinning, wishing he could stop picturing Gabe’s phone lying on the floor in that room with his name on the screen, flashing over and over again.

**

They’re good at not talking. Both in the sense of deliberately avoiding hard conversations, and in the sense of being good at just coexisting together in the same space without having to be actively entertaining each other. 

Which is good, because Erik doesn’t really feel up to entertaining, or being entertained. Double-good, because Gabe is mostly focused on sleeping, watching bad TV, and taking Zoey on walks with a baseball cap pulled down to his eyebrows. 

Erik has Googled this; the internet assures him that going back and forth from feeling better to feeling worse is normal after going through something like Gabe did. He’s worried, of course, but he’s not climbing the walls about it. He’s keeping an eye on things.

The most tiring part is putting up with Gabe’s mood swings, along with his new hobby of getting up in the middle of the night. Erik understands what is going on, but that doesn’t make it any easier. 

Where Erik is sleeping varies night by night; if Gabe asks him to come to bed with him, he does, and otherwise he stays in the guest room. He always keeps the door half-open, though, in case Gabe needs him, so Gabe waking up and going out to the living room wakes him up anyway. 

Erik rubs at his face and squints at his phone on the bedside table; 5:30 AM. Not that early, really, for people with normal jobs. Early for a practice day. He puts his glasses on and shuffles out to the living room, where Gabe is sitting on the couch watching the early-morning ESPN lineup.

“Coffee?” Erik asks, taking a blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around his shoulders. Gabe glances up and nods. 

“Already making it,” he says, tilting his head toward the kitchen. “Did I wake you up again?”

“It’s fine.” Erik goes to the kitchen and gets a mug to set next to Gabe’s already waiting on the counter, then stares at the machine until it’s done brewing. He hears the TV switch off in the other room and Gabe and Zoey’s footsteps enter the kitchen behind him. Interaction has to wait until he’s had his caffeine, though. Let him have this.

Gabe opens the fridge and says something about yogurt. Erik grunts. He could go either way, if Gabe takes that as a yes or a no, it’s fine. 

The machine clicks and whirrs, the light changes color, and Erik pours both mugs of coffee. He retreats to the table with his, closing his eyes for the first sip, then opens them again to find Gabe looking at him with an odd little smile. “What?” Erik mumbles, clutching his mug closer. “It’s early.”

“I know. Sorry I woke you up.” Gabe mixes up his own coffee and brings the yogurt to the table. “Go ahead and close the door tonight, you need the sleep.”

“So do you.” Erik shrugs. “If you’re up, I’m up. It’s not that big a deal.”

“If you’re not getting enough sleep to play your best, that’s a big deal.” Gabe shakes his head before Erik can snap back at that. “I don’t want calls from Bednar. I mean, more than I already get on my own.”

“I’m playing fine.” Erik takes another drink, more slowly. “What woke you up today?”

“Not a nightmare. Just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.” Gabe makes a face. “It’s stupid, I know.”

“Not stupid.” Erik can’t do full-on comfort right now, but he can swat the easy ones down to the ice. 

“It is stupid.” Gabe’s frowning, intensely enough that it cuts through Erik’s fog. “How am I going to get back to the team if I can’t even sleep?”

“You can take as much time as you need, Gabe. Nobody is rushing you back. And your hands—”

“I’m not talking about my hands. I’m talking about my... my brain, my mind.” Gabe gestures at his head, sketching a square next to it. “What if I’m not mentally strong enough to come back? What if I can’t take it anymore?”

Erik hasn’t really been into coke since he was brand-new but right now it might be worth having some stashed around the place so he could wake up and keep up with this conversation the way Gabe deserves. “You mean the game pressure? Or, like, the media side?”

“The media, the fans, the management. Expectations on me.” Gabe takes a breath and tilts his head back. “If I was just playing? In a vacuum? If it was just going out there every day in an empty arena except for two teams? I could do that, I think.”

Erik nods slowly, trying to ignore the sick twist in his stomach. “You’d be a hell of a beer leaguer.”

“What if that’s it, though?” Gabe drops his chin again and looks at him, eyes wide and showing something helpless and raw that Erik knows he has to handle with so, so much care. 

He braces himself to dig deep for that, pull up everything he has, late-game-power-play-minutes of strength. “Gabe...”

“What if I’m not okay?” Gabe rolls over him, voice shaky with panic. “What if I can’t get back? What if I can’t be okay again? If I’m just... fucked up and scared all the time, and people find out, and they look at me like...”

“Whoa, hey.” Something, at least, catches up in Erik’s brain there. “People find out what?”

“That I’m _fucked up_. That I’m _hurt_.” Gabe’s voice cracks heavily and he pushes back from the table, retreating to stand by the window. “I know I didn’t deserve it and I know it wasn’t my fault and I know all that, I do, but what if they don’t _care_? What if they look at me and they just see...”

“Stop. Stop.” Erik gets to his feet slowly, keeping his eyes locked on Gabe’s. “You’re freaking out. Nobody’s going to look at you and see anything bad. They’re gonna see a guy who went through the shit and found his way out. Nobody’s going to think anything bad about you. Breathe, Landy. Breathe with me.”

“But you don’t _know_ that. What if you’re wrong and I can’t do it and they all look at me and _know_?”

Erik takes a careful breath. “Then you’ll be a hell of a beer leaguer. And you’ll have that sweet LTIR money. And the only people who will blame you are assholes who don’t matter anyway.”

Gabe stares at him, hands shaking at his sides. “Fuck, Erik.”

“You _asked_.” He shrugs, not looking away. “I mean, maybe not LTIR. Maybe they buy you out. Still sweet money. You can go in on a ranch with me. Fifty-fifty.”

That earns a shaky laugh. That’s better. “You would buy a ranch with me?”

“Totally. You can have some goats or something. Chickens. It’ll be good.” He raises his eyebrows and holds one hand out toward Gabe, across the table. “Believe me?”

Gabe hesitates a beat, but then takes his hand, giving a little squeeze to Erik’s fingers. “Sort of. Maybe.”

“Good enough.” Erik jerks his chin toward the coffee cups still sitting on the table. “You got travel mugs? The dog needs a walk. You need a walk. I can tag along if there’s coffee.”

“You don’t have to come with us.” Gabe’s smile is wobbly but real. “Go back to bed while I walk her.”

“Like hell I’m letting you out of my sight right now.” Erik comes around the table and tugs him into a hug, holding on tight for a moment and resting his chin against Gabe’s hair. “Travel mugs. I’ll get Zoey’s leash. We’re gonna do a couple miles, and then we’ll all go back to bed.”

“Is this also the way it’s gonna be now? You get to tell me what to do?” Gabe hands on tight for a moment, then slowly disentangles. “I’m not saying it’s a dealbreaker.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Erik heads for the entryway to find his shoes and Zoey’s leash. He doesn’t give himself a minute to stop and melt down this time; if he stops, he might never get moving again. He’s gotta be a shark out here right now, keep swimming, never stop.

**

Another roadie, this one up into Canada. Erik feels like he’s been split in half and the two pieces joined back together not especially well. Half of him is settling back into routine, focused on the games, in the correct headspace for doing his job.

The other half is suspended in cold, dark water, and just wants to sink down as far as possible and go to sleep there. 

He knows the guys are keeping an eye on him; none of them are exactly subtle about anything, ever. The defensemen have taken it upon themselves to form some kind of a roster for babysitting him. They are there at every team meal, sitting protectively around him, jumping out of their chairs if he needs a napkin or a refill of something. It’s sweet, and really funny, and when the badly-done weld between “functional person” and “floating in dark water” is giving way, it’s so irritating he could kill them. 

Even if he manages to escape from them, though, the forwards are on his case, too. Nate is always _hovering_. JT and Josty. Andre, though he seems fairly confused about the whole thing. Even Mikko emerges from his natural detached state to hand Erik things or help him with shit he can handle just fine on his own.

The only way to get any peace is hang out with the coaches or the goalies, and those are their own cliques that don’t actually have room for him. 

They have an afternoon game in Winnipeg, and he falls asleep on the bus ride to the airport. He wakes up to Nate’s hand on his shoulder, his worried-about-EJ face about two inches from Erik’s own.

“Jesus,” Erik says, blinking. “Give me some room to breathe.”

“Sorry.” Nate steps back and jerks his head toward the window. “Plane time.” 

“Thanks.” Erik unfolds himself from the seat, gasping at the complaints from some of his joints. “I’m too old for this.”

“You didn’t cool down enough. I was going to say something but you got away from me.”

“I don’t need you to mother me, Dogg.” He limps down the bus aisle, and moving does help. He’s almost walking normally when he steps down onto the tarmac. 

“Yeah, well, you need something,” Nate mutters. Erik ignores him, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and walking toward the plane. “You’re coming out to dinner with us tonight.”

“Didn’t we already have this fight? I swear I’m having déjà vu right now.”

“Yeah, we did, and I won. So you might as well skip the arguing and just agree to go to dinner now, right?”

That makes a disturbing amount of sense. And Erik’s sincere desire to sleep for a week is stronger than his natural inclination to argue about everything. “Okay.”

Nate blinks. “Wow, that worked?”

“Apparently, yes.” Erik hauls himself up the steps into the plane, his knees grumbling in protest. “I will go to dinner with you guys. I will not promise to be fun, but I will be there.” 

“That’s all I’m asking.” Nate sounds so relieved it’s insulting, and Erik catches him giving Sammy a thumbs-up while Erik’s wrestling his carcass into his seat. Great, they really are ganging up on him, with a plan and everything. His teammates suck. 

He sleeps through the plane ride and wakes up on his own when they touch down in Calgary, which means he’s significantly less cranky at dinner than he expected. He has a few drinks—not too many, just a few—and listens to the guys chirp each other and something in his spine relaxes from a knot he didn’t even realize was there.

“Okay?” Sammy asks quietly, and Erik glances over at him, that wide-eyed kid who always seems to be right where Erik’s looking for him, on or off the ice. 

“Yeah,” Erik says after a minute, looking down at the last of his drink and swirling it around in the cup. “This was good, thanks for making me come along.”

“You’re doing a lot.” Sammy watches him drink that last bit, something in his eyes that Erik doesn’t quite like but definitely doesn’t have the energy to fight about. “It’s okay to rest sometimes.”

“You’re a philosopher now?” Erik closes his eyes and tilts his head back, debating the merits of one more round. Definitely not as many merits as drawbacks. He’ll be good. He has to be good. “I’m gonna get a water, you want anything?”

Sammy laughs a little, and Erik opens his eyes to find him pointing down the table. “Nate got a pitcher of water for everyone. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Of course he did.” Erik catches Josty’s eye and gestures at the pitcher; it makes its way back to him along with an empty glass. Teamwork. “I’m okay, Sammy. Really. I’m tired, but… I mean, that’s normal, this time of year.”

That earns him one of the patented Girard snotty looks. “You’re hockey tired with emotional tired on top of it. That’s not normal. That’s too much.”

Erik sets his glass down a little too hard. “It’s not like there’s anything I can do about that.”

“You can talk to us about it, maybe.” 

And that’s—god, that’s one more fucking thing on his list, then, one more weight on his shoulders. Keep it together. Play hockey. Make sure Gabe is okay. Talk to his teammates about his feelings. 

He forces a smile and pats Sammy on the shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind, seriously. I will.”

Nate and Sam lock eyes down the length of the table and have another completely not sneaky conversation with their eyes. If he didn’t know for a fact that it would make things worse, Erik would get up and go back to the hotel.

But it _would_ make things worse, so he sits back in his chair instead, and drinks his water, and half-listens to an argument about whether they should let Cale pick up tonight or not let him because he’s an infant who shouldn’t know about sex yet. Cale is squawking indignantly enough to keep everyone tuned in and leaving Erik alone, for now at least.

When they do go back to the hotel, he lies face-down on the bed and gives himself a minute to just—white out the thinking part of his brain. Nothing but raw feelings. He checks through the aches and pains in his body, acknowledges his truly stunning feeling of exhaustion, and builds a summer home on the border between frustration and worry, which seem to have taken up all available real estate.

He rolls onto his back and breathes for a minute, then takes his phone out of his pocket and texts Gabe. _How’s it going? U ok?_

Gabe answers quickly, which eases another one of the knots in Erik’s spine. _Watching TV, doing stress ball exercises for my fingers. Fun stuff._

Erik hides his smile behind his arm, even though there’s nobody there to see him. _Don’t overdo it with your fingers. Gotta save a little range of motion for jerking off._

That earns him a string of rude emojis. He sends back his own and sets the phone aside, letting his arm fall across his eyes. He’s tired. So, so, so tired. And since Gabe is okay enough to joke, he might even be able to fall asleep. 

**

One of the agents—her badge said Simms, and Erik knew he had seen her for hours every day since this started but he wouldn’t have been able to guess that for a million dollars—let Erik ride to the hospital with her after they had confirmation that the ambulance had left the house in the mountains. “He’s alert and responsive,” she said, holding the passenger-side door open for him. “This one’s a win, comparatively.”

Erik couldn’t really think of anything to say to that, so he just folded himself into the seat and kept his mouth shut. She got behind the wheel and got them on the road in silence; the radio was set so low it was barely audible, but since it was set to NPR, that was fine by Erik.

“You’re close with him?” she asked abruptly. “With the vic, I mean. Landeskog.”

He probably answered too slowly. It shouldn’t have been a hard question to answer, but... well. Complicated. “Yeah. We’ve been teammates for a long time. We’re good friends.”

“You’ve been living at our field office,” she pointed out. “None of the rest of your teammates have done that.”

He didn’t have a comeback for that. It wasn’t even a question. He just shrugged, and she sighed, flicking her turn signal on and sliding the car across a few lanes of traffic.

“I just want you to know that it’s going to be hard for a while. For him, and for you, and everyone else around him. You’re going to have to be really patient.”

He nodded, staring up at the stoplight, waiting for it to go green. “Do you know, um. Do you know how bad they hurt him?”

She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and didn’t answer until the light turned and she put the car in motion again. “No, I don’t. If I did, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Right. Right.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum. It hurt, but not like a bruise, not like he’d taken a bad check. It hurt like something was too tight underneath it, choking off his breath and his blood. “Sorry.”

She drove another block in silence, her jaw clenched tight when he glanced over at her, then spoke the next time a light pulled them up short. “I assume you’re wondering about sexual assault, right?”

“I don’t know what I’m wondering about. Honestly.” His chest hurt and his whole body was rebelling against how hard he had ditched his routines. He was living in a bad way and suffering for it and none of it fucking mattered as long as Gabe was okay.

She nodded and worked her jaw from side to side. Probably giving herself TMJ with all that clenching. In her line of work, shit. He respected that. “Like I said, I don’t know, and I couldn’t tell you if I did. But if that is the case, then you still just need to be patient. It changes things in a different way than you think. Being locked up and controlled does plenty of damage before you get into those specifics. It’s all about power, taking somebody else’s power away, having it taken away from you. It’s hard for the human mind to wrap around.”

Erik didn’t know what to say to that, and she apparently didn’t expect him to. The rest of the drive was silent, followed by him sitting in the waiting room in silence, followed hours later by one of the other agents coming by and telling him Gabe had been evaluated and had initial treatment, and was settled upstairs, and that Erik could go up and see him before the rest of the team got there if he went up right away.

**

They’re sitting in the living room with takeout and Gabe is showing him his finger exercises with the stress ball, which look just as obscene as Erik suspected when Gabe mentioned them in his text. Zoey is in Erik’s lap, cuddling her heart out, and Erik is holding on to her tightly, trying to figure out if the feeling in his chest is heartburn or happiness.

“It hurts like shit but the fact that I can do it at all is a good sign.” Gabe drops the stress ball on the coffee table and Zoey twitches, torn between lunging after it and staying in Erik’s arms. “Anyway. That was way more information than you asked for.”

“It’s cool,” Erik says, mostly honestly. “I’m glad your hands work, man. I was worried.”

“Me too.” Gabe sits down on the table, facing them, his expression settling into a soft smile. “Do you want me to take her so you can finish eating?”

“I’m okay. Not super hungry.” That’s the wrong answer. Gabe’s eyes narrow and he reaches for Zoey’s collar, so Erik has no choice but to let his arms drop so she can be moved down to the floor between them. 

“You’ve gotta eat. You would be telling me the same thing. You _did_ tell me the same thing.”

Erik shrugs, reaching for his plate anyway. “Yeah, well, you’re recovering.”

“Yeah, well,” Gabe says with exaggerated mockery. “You’re in-season.”

“That sounds like you’re hunting me.” He scoops up a forkful of vegetables and chews obediently, raising his eyebrows for approval. “Will you chill out now?”

“Probably not.” 

“At least you’re honest.” He eats a little more, then puts the plate aside again, the effort of chewing suddenly too much. “Tell me what else you were up to while we were gone.”

Gabe frowns at the plate but for once doesn’t push. He leans forward a little, though, resting his hands on Erik’s knees, running his thumbs back and forth carefully over the curve of muscle just above the kneecap on each one. “Not a lot. PT. Eating. Walking the dog. We watched a lot of Netflix. I need to buy a book or learn to bake bread or something.”

Erik rolls his eyes. “You’ve been stuck at home recovering from stuff while the team’s on roadies before, dude, what do you usually do?”

Gabe pauses for a beat, his hands tightening on Erik’s knees, fingers tensing in a way that makes Erik’s shoulders tighten up again. Whatever Gabe’s about to say, it’s probably going to kick him right in the teeth, because fuck his life, that’s why.

“I guess usually when I’m stuck at home I’m okay with, like, just sitting around,” Gabe says finally. “Alone with my thoughts or whatever. I don’t want to do that right now.”

Erik brings his hand up to rub at his chest, the familiar tightness in his sternum. “Sorry. That was shitty of me to ask.”

“No, you’re fine.” Gabe shakes his head, ducking his chin so his hair falls forward, hiding his face. He’s still touching Erik, though, which might be good. Might mean Erik didn’t hurt him too badly. It would be great if they could manage to not hurt each other, since Gabe is hurting like hell for understandable reasons and Erik is hurting like hell by proximity and exhaustion and this guilt he can’t shake even though he knows perfectly well that he didn’t do anything wrong.

“I’m glad you’re back.” Gabe’s head is still down, face hidden, and his voice sounds odd—a little stilted, maybe. Like he’s stopping and thinking about each word. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we’re _talking_ , I mean, I haven’t talked to anybody much. At the PT office, or people in stores or whatever, but not—”

“It’s not the same.” Erik carefully puts one of his hands over one of Gabe’s. Just carefully. Lightly. Not being weird about it. God, don’t let him be weird about it. “I get what you mean.”

Gabe nods, stiff and jerky, and looks up at him through his hair. It should be funny, how he looks like a little boy like that. It should make Erik laugh and come up with a clever insult or something. It’s not funny. It makes Erik’s breath stop somewhere between his lungs and his throat.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Gabe says again, hoarse and small. He leans in just slowly enough that Erik could stop him if he had any control at all—but he doesn’t, and Gabe kisses him.

They stay like that for a while, kissing without feeling like it’s building toward anything. Exploring, almost, even though they both know this territory by heart. They haven’t been here for a while, after all. The roads and landmarks could’ve changed.

Gabe finally pulls back, taking a low, shuddering breath. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Erik studies Gabe’s face, hoping he wasn’t reading this all wrong. “Do you want to... talk about that, or...”

“Definitely not talk about it.” Gabe shakes his head and meets Erik’s gaze again, his eyes vulnerable this time, yearning. “I want...”

Erik leans forward this time and kisses him again, hoping maybe they can do this by body language instead of talking. They used to be good at that. They used to be good at _this_ , all of it. They barely had to use words at all. 

Gabe’s hands come up and cup the back of Erik’s head, so carefully—Erik can feel the bandages still there, stabilizing things—holding him in the kiss while Gabe’s tongue slips into his mouth. More exploring, and Erik gives way completely, lets him have whatever he wants. He always did. Signs seem to say that he always will.

“Erik,” Gabe whispers, and Erik nods, agreeing to everything in advance. Anything. Whatever Gabe wants. Gabe’s fingers tighten a little against his skull, and he pulls back again, lips red and parted. 

“I want—” His voice is rough, hopeful. “Can you—I mean, if you want.”

If he hadn’t pushed on Erik’s head again, just a little bit, barely enough to get the message across, Erik would have had no idea what he was getting at. But it’s a shadow of a familiar cue from when they were together, Gabe’s bossy eager way of asking for slash demanding a blowjob, and Erik can do that, absolutely. Wants to do that. Wants to give Gabe what he wants.

He nods and eases off the couch, getting to his knees between Gabe’s thighs, hemmed in close by Gabe’s body and the couch and the coffee table. There’s a small space for him and he takes it up completely, knowing that the angle is going to kill his neck and his knees after a while but that what he does with that time will make it worth it.

Gabe’s breathing hard, his face getting red, and now it’s Erik’s turn to give cues, because apparently if he doesn’t Gabe isn’t going to remember to take his pants off. Erik tugs at the waistband of Gabe’s sweats and Gabe obediently stands up to push them down his thighs, then sits again and digs his fingers into Erik’s hair, pulling him forward and pushing him down with more assurance.

Erik closes his eyes and takes Gabe in his mouth, easily remembering the feel of it, the taste, the little sound Gabe makes in the back of his throat when Erik rolls his tongue against him. Erik has in no way been celibate since they shifted over into friendship without fucking, but it’s been a little while—he wanted to focus on hockey this season instead of either dating or hooking up, very aware that the window where he and the team can win a Cup together is narrowing. He’s had an excellent jerking-off life, but he isn’t going to pretend this isn’t a welcome return to the active cocksucking roster.

He absolutely remembers how to do this, and he knows that he’s good at it, and Gabe is making appreciative noises, but this still isn’t quite right. Gabe is _just_ making noises, which isn’t how Gabe has ever worked, in Erik’s experience. Gabe is bossy and pushy and takes what he wants. He backs off in a second if his partner asks, but in the absence of a _slow down_ , he goes hard. And today he isn’t doing that. He’s not pulling Erik’s hair, he’s not pushing at him after that first guiding one, he’s just holding on and moaning roughly when Erik moves right.

Actually, now that Erik’s listening, even his noises aren’t what they were before. Gabe sounds tense and a little desperate, not like he’s relaxing into this. Erik pulls off with a rough, wet sound of his own and sits back on his heels, blinking up at Gabe.

“Are you okay?”

Gabe lets go of him and drags one hand through his own hair, face going red. “Yeah, of course, I’m fine.”

Erik rolls his eyes. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Landy. Was I doing it wrong?”

“No!”

“Well, you didn’t seem to be liking it very much, so...”

Gabe stands up and pulls his sweats back on, his face even redder. “Sorry. This was a bad idea.”

Erik gets to his feet, too, his knee complaining sharply about the movement. “I was a big fan of the idea, actually, but when I’m doing that I kind of want you to be enjoying it.”

“I was. I really...” Gabe cuts off and laughs a little, breathless. “Believe me, I love it when you do that.”

“Then can you tell me what the problem was?”

Gabe tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling for a moment. The blush isn’t draining from his face, but his eyes are suspiciously wet at the corners. Erik should probably look away, but he doesn’t. He just waits. 

“I just freaked out,” Gabe says finally. “I didn’t want to be... taking advantage of you, or anything. I didn’t want you to be doing it just because you felt bad for me.”

Erik shakes his head, feeling heat rise in his own face. Fuck. “That’s not it at all, I swear.”

“You’ve been being so good to me, and patient with my shit, but I don’t want you to suck my dick just because you feel sorry—”

“I do not feel sorry for you,” Erik snaps, too loud, too hard. “Don’t fucking think that for a minute.” Gabe finally looks at him, mouth falling open a little, and Erik presses on. “I feel bad about what happened. I do. But I do _not_ feel sorry for you. There’s a difference, you know?”

Gabe takes a breath and nods just a little bit. “I guess.”

“And I don’t suck dick because I feel bad. I drink because I feel bad, like a reasonable person. Okay?”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I’m not laughing, am I?” Erik drags his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “I don’t do pity fucks. Or blowjobs. Whatever. If I’m touching you it’s because I want to, Gabe.”

Gabe looks at him for a long moment. “It’s been years, you know? I wasn’t sure if I was going for something that’s, you know. Over and done with. Dead.”

“Neither of us is dead.” It’s not the point of what Gabe was saying, but he has to refute it; letting that shit stand is just inviting in bad luck. “And yeah, it’s been a while, but we never stopped caring about each other, right? Maybe sex is just something that comes and goes, for us.”

Gabe almost smiles. “Was that a joke on purpose?”

“No.” Erik rolls his eyes. “You’re like twelve years old, god.” 

The smile grows a little bit, and it makes Erik’s heart fucking light up. “You don’t think the sex thing is just an overreaction to being in the same space, or something? All the cuddling, maybe?”

“I don’t know.” Erik drops down on the couch again, rubbing his face with both hands. “I mean, does it matter? Wherever it’s coming from, if we both want it, then it’s not hurting anybody, right?”

“So... you’re cool with being fuckbuddies? While you’re here?” Gabe doesn’t look like _he’s_ exactly cool with it, and it doesn’t sit right with Erik, either. 

“I guess,” he says anyway, because _don’t say it like that_ would be weird and weak. Friends who help each other out? Friends who care about each other and sometimes have sex? That’s not any different than _fuckbuddies_ , by definition. The words are the same, it’s stupid to claim they feel different.

“Okay,” Gabe says, and gestures toward the kitchen. “I kinda killed the mood, so... I’m gonna go figure out dinner.”

“Yell if you need help.”

Erik watches him go, then flops down lengthwise on the couch, burying a frustrated groan into the cushions. Fuck. That could’ve gone worse, but it really, really could’ve gone better.

He can still taste Gabe in on his tongue, in the crevices of his mouth. It’s salt-sour and nagging, like a memory he doesn’t want to face head-on, and he’s too much of a chickenshit to follow Gabe to the kitchen for water to make it go away.

**

The team has a three-game home stand, so he’s around the house for an entire week. Gabe keeps healing steadily, the bruising on his face almost entirely gone and the number of repeats he does on his finger exercises increasing. He has the feelings kind of therapy once a week, too, but he doesn’t talk about that and Erik doesn’t push him about it. It’s none of his business unless Gabe wants it to be his business. Not like he would know what to say anyway; the only kind of psychologist Erik has ever seen was a sports-focused kind once or twice when he’s gotten himself into a case of the yips on-ice.

For all the tentative agreement on fuckbuddies, Gabe hasn’t tried to touch him again, and Erik hasn’t instigated. Instigating has never been his role; when they started he mostly just stared at Gabe until he took the hint. Using his words has never been his favorite thing, and now he’s vividly aware of not wanting to push Gabe too hard, so...

Well, he’s back to jerking off in the shower. It’s fine.

The second home stand game is a matinee, so he’s home and in sweats on the couch by six. Gabe’s in his office catching up on calls and emails, and Zoey is cycling back and forth between them every so often. It’s peaceful and quiet and Erik is very aware that if he isn’t careful he’s going to fall asleep way too early and throw his schedule off.

He hears Gabe padding down the hall from the office and can’t convince himself to sit up, just lies there and waits for Gabe to walk into his line of vision. He’s holding his phone when he does, smiling a little.

“Don’t take a picture,” Erik says, making a face at him. “I look like shit.”

“You look cute.” Gabe turns the phone to show him he has his messing app open. “Nate and Sammy are coming over for dinner.”

“Does that mean I need to put real clothes back on?”

Gabe snorts. “No. But sit up a minute.”

“Why?” He does it anyway, bracing himself up on one arm while Gabe sits down in the space his head vacated. “Hey!”

“Shh.” Gabe guides him down so his head is cradled in Gabe’s lap, and Erik feels warm all over. No, it’s still not sex, but Gabe wanting to touch him and manhandling him around to take what he wants—yeah, that’s something he’s missed.

“They won’t be here for an hour or so,” Gabe says, his fingers slipping easily through Erik’s hair and combing it flat. “We can hang.”

“You’re all done being an adult with responsibilities?”

“I wish.” Gabe looks down at him, frowning abstractly. “TSN wants me to do an exclusive interview, but ESPN might want to do a profile, too, and I don’t know if I want to do either of those.”

It takes Erik’s brain a beat to catch up. “They want you to talk about the whole thing? Already?”

“Yeah. While it’s still fresh, I guess.” From this angle, Erik can still see the ghost of the bruise on Gabe’s orbital bone. He wants to reach up and touch it, but the idea of Gabe flinching back from him makes his stomach twist. 

“You can tell them to fuck off.” Gabe’s fingers still in Erik’s hair, and Erik swallows. “I mean, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I know. I know. But...” He sighs and shrugs. “PR is part of the job, you know? Interviews. Stuff.”

Erik fumbles around until he finds Gabe’s hand and squeezes it tight. “You don’t have to do this.”

Gabe smiles down at him, wobbly but real. “Thank you.”

“I’ll tell them to fuck off for you if you want.”

“I know you will.” His free hand moves slowly to trace Erik’s jaw and chin. “I appreciate it.”

Erik closes his eyes and lets himself lean into the touch. “Anytime, anywhere, Landy.”

“I told them I need some more time to think about it.” He sighs again, a huff of breath that Erik can feel ruffle his hair. “Thanks for being on my team.”

Erik wants to say something stupid and extremely soft, but instead he squeezes Gabe’s hand again, and they lapse into silence. There’s an invisible clock in both of their heads, ticking down to their teammates getting there, choking them both off from starting something they wouldn’t be able to properly enjoy. Instead the tension just grows, slow and warm and sweet, filling up the whole damn house.

He dozes off for a while, waking up at the sound of Nate and Sam letting themselves in. Gabe goes to greet them, giving Erik a minute to pull himself together, squinting at his distorted reflection in the window and trying to finger-comb his hair into some kind of order. It doesn’t really work, but hopefully they’ll be too focused on Gabe to make fun of him. 

They brought Greek takeout, and the four of them sit around Gabe’s kitchen table, eating and razzing each other and laughing, and even though Erik catches Nate and Sammy both watching him way too closely every so often, it’s still a good time. 

He really wants them to leave, though. The tension is still simmering between him and Gabe, lighting up brighter every time their eyes meet or they bump against each other, and he wants to see where it’s going. 

“So when are we going to have you back, dude?” Nate asks Gabe. “You look way better.”

“I feel better.” Gabe smiles a little. “I’m not sure, though. The doctors won’t give me an exact timeline yet. I’m going to go in and meet with Bednar and the other coaches on Monday, though. Hopefully we can come up with some kind of a plan, or I can help with film or something.”

“It would be good to have you around,” Sam says. “We all miss you.”

“I miss you guys too.” Gabe toys with his fork and glances quickly at Erik, then back at his plate. “I’m hoping I can convince them to take me on the next road trip. I’m going stir-crazy around here.”

“Come to skate tomorrow,” Nate says, which gives Erik an extra minute to take a breath and shove aside his sudden flare of hurt feelings. Of course Gabe is going stir-crazy. Any of them would be in his place. It’s got nothing to do with Erik. He’s not sick of Erik being around—or if he is, he has a right to be, and Erik needs to just mind his own business and be a grown-up about it and not—

“Maybe I will.” Gabe bumps his shoulder against Erik’s, dragging him back into the moment. “Can you give me a ride, man?”

“Sure.” Erik doesn’t look at him, keeping his eyes fixed on the table. “I think I can manage that.”

Sam and Nate both tilt their heads like dogs, just visible at the edge of Erik’s vision. Of course those two are sensitive to everyone’s mood and going to pick up on Erik being weird. Just his luck. He forces a smile and nods at the take-out bag. “Did you bring dessert? There better be something in there.”

“Yes!” Sam grabs the bag and pulls out a few more containers. “Cheesecake for everyone but Nate.”

“You’ll be sorry when the dairy catches up with you,” is Nate’s grim prophecy while the others dig in. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Gabe laughs, shaking his head, practically glowing. “I’ve missed you guys so much.”

“We’ve missed you too, Captain.” Sam leans forward, pointing at Erik with his fork. “And this one, he’s disappeared to take care of you.”

Erik almost chokes on his food, and Gabe’s hand lands on his knee under the table, squeezing gently. “He’s been a big help. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

So apparently Gabe is sensitive to Erik’s anxieties, too. That’s... leaving him feeling a little exposed here, honestly. All three of them can see through his guard? Shit. 

“Just give him back to us eventually,” Nate says, then raises his voice a little, as if they couldn’t pick up on what he was doing. “So did you see the highlights from the Pens game last night?”

“Time for mandatory talking about Sid, huh?” Gabe grins, and they’re off, picking on Nate and giving Erik a moment to catch his breath and squeezes his free hand in a fist under the table. Gabe’s hand is still on his knee, solid and grounding. He doesn’t want to appreciate that, but he does, or at least he doesn’t shake it off. 

Nate and Sam stick around for a while, but turn down watching TV or a movie. “I’ll see you both at skate tomorrow,” Nate says, folding them each into one of his crushing hugs in turn. “Don’t be late.”

Erik swats at him. “I’m the one in charge of fines, not you.” 

“I’m the deputy. Someone’s gotta be able to enforce them on you.” 

Sam’s hug is less intense, but he does stare at Erik for long enough that Erik starts to squirm. “You okay, G?” he asks eventually, shaking him by the shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” Sam says, the emphasis on the first word just slight enough that Erik can pretend it’s an accent thing and ignore it. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Stay a little after, maybe? We can run a few drills?”

“Have I been letting you down?” Shit. He probably has. “Sorry, man. I’ll get there early, we can work before and after.”

“No, just after is fine. And you haven’t let me down, I just—” Sam shrugs. “Feel the need for a little more.”

“You got it.” Erik watches them go, feeling his shoulders ratchet back into solid tension as the door clicks closed. There’s so much to keep track of, and apparently he’s been dropping some of it while he’s been worrying about Gabe. 

Gabe hand landing on him out of nowhere again, this time on his shoulder. “Hey,” Gabe says softly. “Erik? You with me?”

“Yeah, of course.” Erik shakes his head quickly, trying to shake all of his brain cells back into their bins. “You need something?”

Gabe tugs at him, steering him around until they’re facing each other. “Kinda hoped we needed the same thing, unless I was misreading the mood earlier.”

It takes Erik an embarrassing moment to catch up, in which Gabe starts to go red and opens his mouth like he’s going to backtrack. “Yes,” Erik says quickly, grabbing at Gabe’s shirt, keeping him still. “Yes, we both need that. Assuming you’re talking about sex. Yes.”

Gabe laughs, ducking his head and swaying forward to lean against Erik’s chest. “Okay, good. We’re on the same page.”

Erik frees one hand and catches Gabe under the chin, tilting it up so he can kiss him. Like the other day on the couch, it starts off warm and slow, familiar things clicking into place. They stand there in the entryway for a while, hands sliding carefully over and then under shirts, sliding down to palm the ass or, in Erik’s case, do a quick cup-check, which makes Gabe pull away laughing. 

“Come on.” He starts down the hall to the master bedroom, starting to pull his t-shirt off and pausing as his hands prove too clumsy to manage the single sexy movement he likes. “Pretend I’m smooth at this.” 

“You’re fine.” Erik takes off his own shirt and slips past Gabe into the bedroom, turning as he moves so he can toss himself backward onto the bed. “Take your time.”

“Doing that is not a way to make me want to go slow.”

“Doing what?” Erik stretches out, arching his back a little to tug a lump of blanket out of the way. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Looking like that.” Gabe goes still for a minute, t-shirt still hanging from his hands, eyes moving over Erik’s body. “You drive me crazy, looking like that.”

Erik swallows, meeting his eyes, and honestly Gabe looking like _that_ , backlit by the hallway so his hair makes a halo, is going to drive him crazy too. 

Gabe finally drops his shirt to the floor and closes the gap to the bed, climbing on and stretching his body out over Erik’s. He braces himself on his hands for a moment, looking down at him, then winces and shakes his head. “That’s not gonna work.”

“Sorry,” Erik starts, moving to sit up. “We can—”

“No, I’ve just gotta... okay if I squish you?” He lets his weight settle on Erik’s chest, watching him closely until Erik nods. “Okay. We’ll try it like this.” 

“I don’t know if you know this about me,” Erik says, resting his hands on Gabe’s hips, “but I’m pretty strong.”

“That’s good.” Gabe kisses him again, his better hand cupping Erik’s head and scritching slowly through his hair. Their hips are pressed flush together and Erik can feel the curve of Gabe’s dick up against his groin, heavy and waiting. He works one of his hands down between them, fumbling to guide Gabe up and out of his sweatpants.

“Mm.” Gabe’s breath hitches. “Thought we were going slow.”

“Going as fast as you want to.” Erik turns his head and kisses Gabe’s neck, dragging his teeth over the pulse point. “You drive.”

That earns him another sound, low and hot and happy, even though it isn’t really doing much to remember that Gabe likes to be in charge. He has a wide range of memories to choose from on that theme—Gabe holding him down, bending him over the furniture, boxing him in against the wall, laughing with delight at how Erik gave way to him, let him in, loved handing off the lead for a while. 

Erik is self-aware enough to know that he’s repressed and a control freak. He’s more than at peace with that—it's part of his sense of self. Trusting Gabe enough to let that down means cutting out a part of his chest and handing it over. He doesn’t know for sure if Gabe knows that, what a big deal it is, but Gabe has never bruised that part or let it down.

Right now Gabe is biting at his collarbone and grinding their hips together. Erik takes a breath and arches up again, squirming until he can get his sweats pushed down. Gabe does not help in the slightest, just keeps his body weight on top and bites until Erik sees a flash of stars.

“Jesus,” he gasps, flopping back to the bed, waist of his sweats imprisoning him at mid-thigh. “Let me get these off.”

Gabe pulls back slowly, watching with hot eyes as Erik kicks his sweats off, then quickly shedding his own before coming up the bed and tackling Erik again. The aggression of it isn’t surprising but the slightly frantic edge Erik’s starting to pick up on is, and he tangles his fingers in Gabe’s hair to pull him back for a moment.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, off some instinct he doesn’t totally understand. “Don’t be scared.”

From the way Gabe’s eyes flinch shut, his instinct hit that nail on the head. Gabe breathes open-mouthed for a moment, then rests his forehead on Erik’s shoulder and nods. “Sorry.”

Erik slides his hand down Gabe’s side to his hip, then over to take careful hold of Gabe’s cock. “I want you to fuck me.” A shudder runs through Gabe’s body and Erik presses a kiss to the side of his head. “Is that cool?”

Gabe laughs, warm breath caught on Erik’s skin along with a wetness that’s either spit or tears and Erik isn’t going to check which. “Yes it’s _cool_. Shut up.”

“Just checking.” He nudges until Gabe lifts his head and kisses him again, focusing on that to keep away from his relief that asking hadn’t opened up a new minefield that he wouldn’t understand or know how to navigate. Gabe fucking him is something he absolutely understands. His body knows how to do this.

It’s been a long time, though. Gabe moves down to suck his cock for a while first, coaxing Erik’s habitually tight muscles to relax and let him open up. Gabe keeps fondling and teasing after he pulls off and takes the lube that Erik passes him from the bedstand; getting Erik warmed up is a process that can’t be stopped halfway or it has to be started all over.

It feels like it takes forever, his dick a frustrated ache against his stomach while Gabe fingers him open, his mouth working occasionally against Erik’s balls and groin and inner thigh with light kisses, bites, quick flicks of tongue. Erik’s got sweat running into his eyes and his breath is hoarse in his throat by the time Gabe sits up and taps him on the thigh.

“Turn over,” Gabe says, and Erik does as he’s told, rolling onto his stomach and then up on his knees and elbows, head hanging down between his shoulders with his sweaty hair in clumps before his eyes. The bed shifts under him as Gabe moves around, getting the condom on and steadying himself between Erik’s legs. “Okay?”

Erik nods, jerky and helpless, and then the blunt head of Gabe’s dick is pressed against him. He chokes off a sound, trying to push back, and Gabe swats him on the hip, pushing in so slowly it makes Erik pant against the mattress.

Gabe _keeps_ going slow, getting himself seated deeply and then pulling back a fraction at a time, pushing in before Erik expects it and then pulling out again, varying the rhythm and the depth so every movement is a shock that makes Erik’s thighs shake. God, it’s so good. He feels like if he put his hand flat on his stomach he would feel the curve of Gabe’s cock inside him. He feels like his guts are going to twist up and crawl out and leave him hollow and spent and empty. He feels wet and wrung out and like he’s both drowning and being pulled to the surface.

Gabe gets tired of playing around, at some point, and finds his rhythm, hard and deep and steady. One hand settles on the back of Erik’s head, holding his face down against the mattress while Gabe fucks him. Erik chokes and gasps for breath, body rocking helplessly with Gabe’s movements, his fingers scrambling against the sheets. He hasn’t been fucked like this in years. Why is he surprised that Gabe would remember? He hasn’t forgotten anything about what Gabe likes—why did he think Gabe might have forgotten anything about him?

That’s a question for later, or more likely, never. Right now he just wants Gabe to hammer into him until he either blacks out or comes just from the heat and friction, his cock never touched.

Gabe’s groaning in pleasure and frustration, rough little sounds that make Erik’s hips hitch instinctively. “You feel so good,” he gasps against Erik’s back. “So good, I swear, I can’t—god, so good for me.”

Erik nods frantically, gulping enough air to gasp nonsense back at him, just begging noises, wanting him to finish and let Erik finish, too, bring the world down to bursts of light and total silence inside his head.

“Fuck,” Gabe hisses, and buries himself so deep Erik thinks he can feel it in his throat. He can feel Gabe’s hips jerking as he comes. 

Gabe’s weight is heavy on his back for a moment, then Gabe drags his hand away from Erik’s head and down his body. He takes Erik’s cock in his hand and strokes, once, twice, barely a third time and Erik comes, crying out against the mattress and shaking all over. He must clench down on Gabe because Gabe hisses and bites him on the shoulder, his teeth grinding in as they rock together through the aftershocks.

Erik collapses bonelessly to the bed and Gabe rides him down. They lie there for a while, sticky with sweat and come, and Erik can’t think, can’t form a single coherent thought, can’t do anything but breathe and feel Gabe against him, inside him, so close they seem to share a skin.

When Gabe moves, Erik makes a noise of protest, but Gabe pulls away anyway. Erik closes his eyes and listens to the sound of him moving to the en-suite, the sink running, Gabe’s footsteps coming back, and braces himself for the cold washcloth to meet his skin. Gabe wipes his ass and between his thighs, then rolls him over like a rag doll to clean up his dick and stomach. Erik opens his eyes and blinks in the dim light, trying to meet Gabe’s eyes. 

“Good?” Gabe asks, his face unreadable where he’s backlit by the hall again. His voice is rough and uncertain, and Erik operates on instinct again, reaching for him without saying anything. Gabe comes easily, and Erik can feel the slight shudder in his body, something nervous and wrong that he needs to extinguish by holding Gabe close to him again.

“Perfect,” he mumbles, finally getting his brain and his throat to work together. “So good.”

“I wasn’t too rough?” Gabe kisses the bite mark on Erik’s collarbone, which he’d entirely forgotten about until the pressure makes it light up in pain. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m familiar with what sex with you is like.” Erik holds on tight as Gabe tenses. “I like it. You know that. It’s good for both of us.”

Gabe takes a rough breath, then another. “I guess maybe, you know, having something happen to me should’ve made me a nicer person. More gentle. Something.”

Erik sighs, shifting them around so he can look Gabe in the face. “You think being rough with me in bed makes you like those guys?” Gabe shuts his eyes and shrugs. “That’s stupid. Don’t be stupid.”

“What’s stupid about it?”

“Well, for one thing I’m here because I want to be, not because you hit me over the head and threw me in a van.” Gabe shrugs again and Erik rolls his eyes. “Come on, Landy. If I didn’t like it, do you really think I wouldn’t tell you? It’s me. I would bitch endlessly about it. And if you tried to make me do stuff I didn’t want, I would have no problem saying no. And I know you would stop. Because I trust you. That’s the difference, okay? We trust each other.”

Gabe blinks at him, eyes wet and bright, but a smile tugging at his mouth. “When did you get smart? It’s weird.”

Erik shrugs, hoping Gabe’s too caught up in his own feelings to notice the way Erik’s trying not to shake now, in relief and borderline hysteria. There are so many layers here, it’s like falling down a spiral staircase, always another turn and something new to crash into for full-body bruises.

Maybe they’ve made it to a landing okay, though, because Gabe doesn’t push for an answer or pull away. He settles in close to Erik’s body and kisses his shoulder, his neck, his mouth. He nuzzles under Erik’s ear and whispers. 

“You don’t have to thank me,” Erik whispers back, because that’s embarrassing and weird. Gabe shrugs unrepentantly. 

“You want to shower?” he asks after a few minutes, and Erik shakes his head, because he’s comfortable and warm. “Okay,” Gabe assents. “Before skate tomorrow, then.”

“We’ll have to get up to let Zoey out before bed,” Erik points out, hating every word. “And you need your pills.”

“Not yet, though.” Gabe shifts back against the pillow and Erik moves with him, finding an even better place. 

**

Nothing can ever be easy, Erik thinks in the split second between when the stick hits him and when he hits the boards. 

It’s a solid cross-check, but the kind he can’t even really be mad about; they’re battling for the puck, everyone does what they have to do. Unfortunately, what that guy had to do is crack two of Erik’s ribs. 

The trainers tape him up and give him the baseline level of pills and sympathy. “Three to four weeks,” one of the assistants says, helping him carry his gear back to the locker room. “You going to stick around for the rest of the game or do you want a car home now?”

“I’ll stay.” They let him rinse off before they taped him, so at least he’s not sitting in his own sweat. He sits in the dressing room and checks his phone, responding to the worried texts from his family before he taps into the one from Gabe. 

_I’ll have ice packs ready when you get here._

Erik types back carefully with plenty of help from autocomplete. _You sure you want me there? I’m a duck when I’m hurt._

He gets back some crying-laughing emojis. _Such a duck!_

_Duck you. It works for both._

More emojis. _Have them bring you here when you’re done._

One of the legions of assistants draws the short straw of driving him. She doesn’t know one house from another, so he doesn’t know why he tells her, “I’ve been staying at Gabe’s place while he’s out, so can you take me there? All my stuff is there.”

“Of course, Mr. Johnson. Just put the address in the GPS.”

Too bad it wasn’t a cross-check to the head, then maybe he could be unconscious and not have to be called Mr. Johnson. God, he’s so fucking old. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Gabe meets them at the door, sweet-talking the assistant in his usual way. Erik shuffles down the hall away from them, focused on making it to the couch and collapsing into his usual seat, facing down the length of the couch, legs outstretched. The pills are helping, but holding extremely still is the only way to really stop the pain. 

Gabe joins him a few minutes later, sitting at the other end of the couch and studying him critically. “You know, if you don’t want to have sex with me, there are easier ways.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying.” He smiles and rubs Erik’s leg. “Sucks, man. How bad is it?”

“Two cracked ribs. Three to four weeks.” He takes a careful breath. “Could’ve been worse.”

“Definitely. I missed it live, just heard them say that you went down, and I was afraid it was a hit to the head.” He’s still rubbing Erik’s leg, aimless little touches that are more soothing than they have any right to be. 

“If it was a concussion you would’ve kicked me out, right? I _know_ I’m an asshole when I have a concussion.”

“I might keep you heavily sedated, but I wouldn’t kick you out, Erik.” Gabe squeezes his ankle. “I wouldn’t leave you on your own.”

That’s—shit, that’s getting way to close to things they can’t do, but Erik doesn’t have the energy to shut it down. He just closes his eyes, rubbing his foot against Gabe’s knee while Gabe keeps holding his ankle, keeping them connected at both points.

They go to bed together that night, in Gabe’s room, but after an hour of trying and failing to get comfortable, Erik moves back to the living room to sleep sitting up in the recliner. It’s not much better, but at least all of his squirming and grumbling between stretches of dozing won’t keep Gabe awake. 

At two AM Zoey’s licking his hand and whining, waking him up from a brief visit to actual REM sleep to drag him back to the bedroom, where Gabe’s twisting under the blankets in the grip of another nightmare.

“Landy. Gabe. Hey.” Erik sits on the edge of the mattress and reaches for him, trying not to groan at the pain of moving the arm on his bad side. “Gabe, wake up. It’s okay. You’re okay.” He finds Gabe’s shoulder and shakes him a little, until Gabe gasps and jerks back. “Hey. There you are. It’s okay.”

“Shit.” Gabe turns his face against the pillow, muffling a groan against it. “Dammit.”

“Yeah.” Erik doesn’t have any more insight than that. “Same dream?”

Gabe nods and sits up, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I woke you up?”

“Zoey did. Don’t worry about it.” He stands up slowly, gasping at the pain. “You want coffee and painkillers?”

“You really know how to party.” They shuffle down the hall to the kitchen, wince and grumble when Gabe turns on the lights, and divide up into their respective roles in the silent dance of making coffee. Erik makes toast, too, why the hell not? Living it up in the wee hours of the morning. 

It’s ridiculous and absurd and Erik thinks that when he’s retired and nursing his bad knees wherever he buys a ranch after hockey, this will be one of the things he thinks about the most, coffee and toast and pills with Gabe at two-thirty in the morning, looking from the condo windows over Denver, passing out together on the couch. 

He never imagines another person with him in his future-looking-back fantasies, but it could happen. He won’t get his hopes up, especially not when it already ran its course for them once, but… well. It _could_ happen. Stranger things have.

**

He doesn’t expect the guys to forget about him while he’s out, exactly, but he assumes he’ll no longer be at the front of their minds. They definitely shouldn’t have time to still be worrying about him spending too much time taking care of Gabe, or whatever their problem was. He has to spend time healing his ribs, now. That should, in theory, appease them. 

But somehow, he’s wrong about that. They’re all still texting him and calling him and checking in on him at a weirdly intense rate, especially Sammy and Nate, who really need to get hobbies or something. 

“I’m fine,” he tells Nate for what feels like the fiftieth time that day. “I was asleep when you called. You woke me up.”

“You shouldn’t mope around all day. Make sure you get out and do something.”

“What exactly am I supposed to do? Breathing hurts. Walking _really_ hurts. I guess I could go rock-climbing, but that’s going to hurt _a lot_.”

“Tough it out,” Nate says flatly, “but get out of the house, EJ.”

“What is your problem, dude? Seriously.”

There’s a long-ish pause before Nate answers. Longer than Erik is comfortable with, anyway. “I just worry about you.”

“What are you worried I’m going to do? I don’t get it.”

“You’re like... you’re so deep in this Gabe thing. You’re not protecting yourself at all.”

Erik presses his hand over his ribs as if that’s going to make taking a deep breath any less awful. “Wow. I don’t know which part to start with there.”

“Pick one.”

“What exactly is _this Gabe thing_?” He would make air quotes, but one hand is holding the phone and the other one is holding his ribs. Hopefully his tone can convey the message. 

“Look.” Nate pauses again. “Obviously what happened to him was bad. It was awful. But you’re, like, trying to fix him all by yourself and you can’t do that. You’re going to get chewed up until nothing’s left.”

Erik can feel a vein in his forehead throbbing in time with the pain in his ribs. Everything connected to his heart hurts the same. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m not doing this by myself. He has doctors. He has a therapist, even. I’m just helping him at home.”

“You’re not _just_ anything. You’re putting all of your time and energy into this and not taking care of you.”

Erik looks out the window, that big sweeping view over Denver. “He’s my best friend, Nate. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”

Nate exhales slowly and falls silent, the two of them breathing into the phone off-sync for a while.

“Okay,” Nate says finally. “I won’t bug you about it. Just try to take care of yourself, okay? Heal up. We need you back out here.”

“I will. I want to be back out there, too.” He lets go of his ribs and rubs his face instead. “And I do appreciate that you give a shit. Really. It’s... it’s nice to know.”

Nate grunts in acknowledgment and hangs up. Erik underhand pitches his phone at the couch and sinks down to lie flat on the floor. 

He’s down there for a while, staring at the ceiling as the patterns of sunlight shift and change across it. He hears Gabe’s keys in the door, the click of Zoey’s claws, the anxious hitch in Gabe’s breath when he sees the shape of his body on the floor. “Erik?”

Erik lifts one hand and waves vaguely, then stuffs it under his torso when it gets a thorough licking treatment from Zoey. “Hey.”

“What, um.” Gabe stands over him, looking down. Erik blinks at his upside-down face. Handsome even from this angle. Disproportionately large forehead, still. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“I just wanted to lie down,” he says honestly. 

“I thought maybe you had a heart attack or something.” Gabe slowly sinks down to sit cross-legged at Erik’s head. “Kind of scared the shit out of me for a minute there.”

“Sorry.” Erik takes a breath and lets it go, then lifts his head a little. Without asking, Gabe scoots closer and guides him to settle it in his lap. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Am I helping? By being here?”

Gabe’s hands go still, his forehead creasing. “Is that a joke?” Erik shrugs and closes his eyes. “I mean—of course you’re helping. I couldn’t have managed any of this without you here. Where did you get the idea that you’re not helping?”

“Nate told me I’m wearing myself out worrying about you instead of taking care of myself.”

Gabe is very still for another moment, then his thumb smooths over Erik’s forehead. “That’s not saying that you’re not helping, that’s saying you’re helping too much.”

“If I’m actually helping you, then that’s what matters. There’s no such thing as too much.” 

“Jesus, Erik.” Erik keeps his eyes firmly closed, but he can hear Gabe sigh, feel him shift his weight, gets his head gently repositioned by Gabe’s hands. “If you’re going to be a martyr, don’t do it on my account, okay?”

“It’s not being a martyr.” He wants to sit up and pull away, but at the same time he’s too fucking tired, and Gabe’s hands feel too good. “It’s just... priorities. You matter most. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”

Gabe breaths in sharply. “You still feel that way?”

“I know I'm not supposed to. But I can’t just turn it off.” He shakes his head, just a little, not enough to dislodge Gabe’s touch. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Gabe’s hands smooth over his hair again, then brush against his face, his jaw. “Please don’t be sorry.”

“I guess we probably need to talk about this, huh?” He makes himself open his eyes and look up at Gabe, still upside-down, still stupid-beautiful. 

“At some point. Not right now.” Gabe touches the tip of his nose with one fingertip. “You want to get off the floor and go lie down in bed? I’ll bring you water and your drugs.”

“Weren’t we just talking about how me taking care of you is the thing? Not you taking care of me?”

“It’s good to mix things up sometimes, Erik.” Gabe bends down and kisses him on the forehead. “C’mon. On the count of three. One, two, three, up...”

**

Nate corners him in the hallway outside the trainer’s room. “Well?”

Erik pushes him back gently. “I can skate on Monday, no contact. So I’m getting there.”

“Awesome.” Nate offers him a fist-bump and Erik returns it, both of them making gentle explosion noises. “Hey, I’m gonna come over tonight.”

“Uh.” Erik blinks at him. “Okay? Gabe invited you?”

“No, nobody invited me. But I’m coming over.”

“Kinda rude, Dogg. I thought mamas taught their babies better than that in Canada.”

Nate rolls his eyes. “The Euro boys are taking Gabe out to dinner, so you and me can hang. Okay?”

“Wow, when you put it like that, like I’m being _ordered_ to hang out with you, that definitely makes it less weird. Good job.” 

“If you tell me you don’t want me to, I won’t. But I’d like to, if it’s okay.” 

He sounds extra-serious, to the point where it makes the back of Erik’s neck prickle. “You’re always welcome, as long as this isn’t going to be another lecture on how I’m not taking care of myself.”

Nate nods slightly. “That’s fair.” 

“Because I don’t want to talk about that again. I’m serious.”

“Got it. I will be chill. Promise.”

“Then I’ll see you tonight.” Erik fist-bumps him again and makes his way back out to the parking lot, nodding to the other guys but not stopping for more chatting. 

He ends up following Gabe’s car down the street to the condo, and Gabe waits for him in the lobby, swinging his keys idly off one finger. “What’s the report?” he asks, just as Erik says “How did PT go?” 

Gabe laughs a little. “It was fine. I’m making progress.”

“Same.” Erik shrugs and follows him down the hall. “No-contact practice on Monday.”

“Oh! That’s good.” Gabe grins at him and unlocks the door. “I’m jealous.”

“I know.” Erik follows him in and tosses his bag to the floor. “So you’re going out with the guys tonight?”

“How did you know that?” Gabe catches Zoey in the middle of her attempt to jump up on him. “None of that, you... I tried to get you an invite but they were very insistent on Europeans only.”

“Apparently Nate’s coming over here to hang out with me. I think this is an elaborate setup.”

Gabe frowns, dropping Zoey back onto her feet. “A setup for what?”

“I don’t know.” Erik moves into the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I’m starving.”

“Yeah, sure. There’s leftovers.” Gabe leans against the kitchen island. “Do you think he wants to talk to you about if you’re spending too much energy on me again?”

“I specifically told him I wasn’t talking about that again, so... he better not.” He takes the containers out of the fridge and gets plates, getting all the way to starting to split the food up before he realizes that Gabe hasn’t said anything. 

When he looks over, Gabe’s frowning and scraping his teeth over his lower lip. “Gabe?”

“Nothing.” Gabe shakes his head and goes to the cabinets. “You want a water?”

“Yeah, please. With ice.”

They don’t say anything else until they’re at the table, food heated and glasses full and looking at each other with vague unease, because tension’s been building in the room that whole time. “What?” Erik says finally, when he can’t take it anymore. “Just... say whatever you’re thinking.”

“Don’t get mad, first of all.” Gabe pushes his fork against his food, then lies it down again. “But what if they’re right?”

Erik expects himself to get mad honestly; it would be a very him thing to do. But the rush of anger doesn’t come, just a kind of empty tiredness. “Seriously?”

“I mean when a lot of people are all saying the same thing, it might at least be worth looking at.”

“These aren’t reasonable people, though. These are our teammates.”

“Okay, fair.” Gabe makes a face and picks his fork up again. “They do know us pretty well, though.” 

Erik takes a deep breath. “If you want me to go home, just tell me.”

“I _don’t_ want you to go home.” Gabe’s face is red, all the way to the tips of his ears, his eyes fixed stubbornly on his plate. “But I don’t want to hurt you, either.”

“You’re not hurting me.”

“I don’t want you to be trapped, or stuck, just because I...”

“I don’t feel trapped. Or stuck.” Erik presses his hands over his eyes. “Why won’t anyone listen to me when I talk? Is it that hard to believe I know my own shit?”

There’s another long stretch of silence, and when Erik takes his hands away and blinks to clear his vision, he finds Gabe looking at him, eyes bright, expression unguarded in that way that always makes Erik’s heart flip. 

“I just get worried,” Gabe says, his voice unsteady. “That I’m being selfish. Because I want you here, I want you to stay. When I was up there, at the house, I was so scared. And I kept thinking that I wanted to see you. I wanted to hear you bitching about your teeth, and being too hot or too cold, and how you can’t find your damn phone charger. I wanted you telling dumb jokes and losing your temper about traffic and always having my back no matter what.”

Erik opens his mouth, but Gabe shakes his head. “And then I got back down here and... you really were there, having my back. _And_ bitching about everything, and... all of it, and I was like, don’t fuck this up, Gabe, god, don’t you fuck this up, because this isn’t even a second chance, it’s a third chance, and those don’t come around a lot.”

“How is it a third chance?” Erik asks, not because it’s the important part of this, but because he can’t follow the thought. 

“What? Oh.” Gabe scrubs at his eyes. “Well, if we got back together, that’s a second chance. If I made it out of there and got to... live, I guess, that’s a second chance. So if I get both, you have to add them together, that’s a third chance.”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense at all. The math... no, dude.”

Gabe looks at him for a minute, and they both start to laugh, just a little at first and then harder, spiraling off out of control until they’re both bent over the table in hysterics. “You’re thinking about the _math_ ,” Gabe gasps. “You’re so bad for my ego, Erik.”

“Sorry! Sorry. I just... it was distracting me.” Erik is holding his ribs again, the ache there at least serving the purpose of keeping him grounded through all... this. He doesn’t even know what to call it. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Gabe says, reaching across the table to catch Erik’s free hand. “I want you to be here. I want... like, I hope you know what I’m getting at, here. I want you to be here for as long as you want to stay.”

Erik looks at him, studying his stupid beautiful face like he doesn’t already have it memorized, like he doesn’t know Gabe’s face better than anything. “You want to try again?” Gabe nods. “Even though I’m still... I mean, it’s not going to be any easier this time.”

Gabe frowns. “The problem last time wasn’t that it wasn’t easy.”

“What was it, then?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.” He shrugs, rubbing his thumb over Erik’s knuckles. “Maybe it just wasn’t the right time, you know? But it wasn’t because things were hard. It wasn’t anything like that.”

Erik looks down at their hands, skin on skin, busted knuckles and soft palms. “What if... look, this is a hypothetical, okay? But what if you don’t feel the same once you feel... better? When there’s a little more distance between you and what happened?”

Gabe’s quiet for a moment, his fingers tightening against Erik’s. “I guess that’s a fair question.”

“I’m not trying to shoot this down.” God, Erik hopes he believes him. “I just feel like we can’t pretend that might not happen.”

“I get it. I do.” Gabe takes an unsteady breath. “I don’t know what to tell you, though, except that I don’t feel like that’s the case. I mean this.” He gestures at his chest. “With all my heart.”

Erik swallows hard and lets go of his side, bringing his hand up to take Gabe’s, closing the circuit between them. “Okay.”

“What?” Gabe laughs, ducking his head a little. “Okay, what?”

“I believe you.” Erik brings both of Gabe’s hands to his mouth and kisses them carefully. “I mean. We might as well give this another shot.”

**

Mikko and the Russians pick Gabe up for dinner. “That’ll be a fun car,” Erik says, looking out the window at the car idling on the street while Gabe puts on his shoes. “Seriously, you should film the whole ride.”

“The restaurant isn’t very far away. It’s fine.” Gabe comes up behind him and kisses the back of his neck quickly. “I’ll see you later? Don’t let Nate drag you out on a bender.”

“Yeah, that sounds like something the two of us would do.” He wouldn’t really mind, actually. The inevitable suffering might be worth it. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Gabe smiles at him and lets himself out, and Erik stands there for a while, his hands loose at his side, struck by how quiet it is.

Zoey wags sleepily at him from her bed in the corner of the living room, then curls up smaller. He walks to the couch and sits down carefully, sitting upright and facing forward instead of sprawling out as usual. Sitting like he’s waiting for a plane. He isn’t sure where the sudden awkwardness is coming from, the sense that he isn’t in the exact same place he’s been all day and a million times before. It’s—it’s just weird. 

He takes a breath and checks his phone, then sets it aside on the coffee table. No messages from Nate, so he has to assume he’s still on his way. 

His chest hurts yet again, which is just fucking rude when his ribs hurt at the same time. He gets up again, walks to the kitchen for his pills, takes them at the sink. He’s still standing there, braced on the edge of the counter, when something slips in his head. 

That’s what it feels like—like two things were leaning against each other and holding a whole structure up, and one of them _slipped_. The whole thing comes tumbling down in an ugly, awkward rush; there’s no explosion, no crash, just the tension that was keeping it together giving way without warning.

Erik sinks down to the floor, sitting down hard with his feet kicking out in front of him. His hands are cold and tingling, and he presses them over his face, hiding his view of the room. He needs to focus on breathing, which suddenly feels way too hard. He drags air in through clenched teeth, a choked noise emerging on every exhale. 

He isn’t crying—god, he wouldn’t know how if he had to, he hasn’t let himself cry since he was a kid, except at the hospital with Gabe, but that was different, that was... something else. There’s no catharsis here in this kitchen, and so his body is doing this whole painful seized-up messy thing, because it _wants_ to cry and he _can’t_. 

He jerks his head back from his hands, hitting it back against the under-sink cabinets. His mouth drops open, gasping for air and gagging on what it gets, and there’s no reason for this, no reason to be like this, everything is _fine_ , Gabe is fine, Gabe wants to be with him again, things are actually _better_. 

What is wrong with him?

“EJ? Jesus Christ.”

Nate crosses the kitchen in a hurry, dropping a takeout bag to one side as he moves. Erik shakes his head, trying to communicate that he’s fine without actually having to use any air to do it. Zoey is there too, of course, scrambling around Nate to shove her face in Erik’s and lick at him.

“I knew this was coming,” Nate mutters, hooking his hands under Erik’s arms and hauling him to his feet. “What have I been saying for _weeks_? Oh, nobody listen to Nate, what does he know, just keep running yourself down and see what happens, have a fucking breakdown, can’t even wait til I get here, just fucking break down all by yourself in the kitchen—”

Erik tries to shake him off but ends up just flopping forward against his chest, where Nate cradles him like a doll to haul him over to the table and then set him in a chair. Once he’s propped up, Nate pivots on his heel, scanning the kitchen like the Terminator and then sweeping up two things: the takeout bag and the pill bottle from the sink.

“Did you take these?” He barks out the question like a drill sergeant, and Erik rolls his eyes, nodding and holding up two fingers. “Two?” Nate checks the label and his shoulders relax a fraction. “All right. Because I _would_ shove something down your throat and make you puke. You asshole.”

“I’m fine,” Erik wheezes, his lungs finally cooperating that much. “I just had, like. A thing. But I’m fine.”

“You collapsed on the fucking kitchen floor.” 

“It wasn’t, like.” His voice is too shaky. Erik swallows and tries again. “It wasn’t a seizure or anything. I just couldn’t breathe and my heart was beating fast and my hands got cold.”

“Oh, wow, that’s so much better!” Nate pulls his phone out of his pocket and types angrily for a minute, squinting. Erik hadn’t even realized that angry typing was a thing, until now. Maybe Nate’s texting someone to come over here and shoot him in the head, which honestly has a certain appeal. His whole fucking body hurts, _again_. 

“You probably had a panic attack,” Nate says finally. Googling, then. Much less helpful than arranging a hit man. “You’ll be okay. God, why couldn’t you wait until I got here? You’re an idiot.”

Erik lets himself sag forward and rest his head on the table. If he isn’t dying, he doesn’t need to hold himself upright for dignity’s sake. “Anything else you want to get out of your system? Lay it on me.”

“I’ve got a lot to say to you, actually. I could read you a fucking book.” Erik can hear him moving around, and then the sink running. A mug touches down on the table next to his face, hard enough that water splashes over the edge. “Drink that while I dish out the food.”

Erik drags himself upright again and cradles the mug in both hands. “I’m not going to apologize for caring about him.”

“I don’t want you to apologize for that. Nobody wants you to apologize for that.”

“Then what is your problem?”

Nate slams two plates down on the counter. “How many times do I have to say this? I want you to take care of _yourself_. Or let some of us take care of you. Let us take care of Gabe so you can take a break. Pick one of those. Or do all of them, that would be even better! But don’t fucking chew yourself up for him.”

Erik shakes his head and pushes the mug away from him. “You don’t get it.”

“Get what? That you’re a self-sacrificing idiot?”

“My shit doesn’t _matter_.” His voice breaks and he swallows hard again, staring down at the grain of the table so he won’t risk seeing Nate’s face. “He matters. He went through hell, and he needed my help, and—and he matters, okay? I would take so much worse than this to help him. Even if he didn’t want me back, even if he—I don’t care. I don’t matter. He does.” 

He can hear Nate’s sharp indrawn breath even without looking up. “EJ.”

“I would take his place in that fucking house, Nate. I would take _any_ of it, to keep him safe, keep him okay. I would give up... anything. The team. The game. Anything.”

“Stop. You... stop.” 

Erik shakes his head and then buries his face in his hands again, trying to control his breath so it doesn’t turn into more wracking, painful heaves. Deep breathing, training breathing, weight-room breathing. His ribs feel like they want to crack all over again. 

Nate’s hands under his arms again, hauling him up again. Pulling him into a hug that hurts like _shit_ but that he melts into anyway, clinging to Nate’s back for dear life. 

“You’re so fucking wrong,” Nate mutters, his voice rumbling through his chest into Erik’s body. “You matter so much, EJ. If Gabe heard you saying all that it would break his fucking heart. You matter just as much as he does, nobody ever... fuck, EJ. How can you say that stuff? It’s so wrong, and you don’t even know.”

Erik drags in a raw breath, then another, another. He still can’t fucking cry, and his body seems to be dealing with it this time by not letting any of his limbs work, but Nate’s holding him up so that’s okay. 

“I would do it for you, too,” he mumbles when he has the air again. “You matter too. Not quite as much as Gabe. But a lot.”

Nate shakes his head, laughing in a breathless way. “Yeah, well. You have to let the rest of us make the same decision about you. Only fair.”

“Who said anything about fair?” Erik tries to get himself back on his feet, but Nate won’t let go. “My ribs, dude. Gotta... stop squeezing, please.”

“Sorry.” Nate lets go and steps back, but then catches Erik’s chin in his hand. “I’m serious, though. Stop fighting us and chill the fuck out or I’ll tell Gabe what you said.”

Erik literally does not have the energy to fight back right now, which means Nate gets to win this. “Which part are you going to tell him?”

“That you don’t think you matter as much as him. Then he’ll go nuclear and you’ll have to deal with it.”

Erik glares at him as best he can, then turns to find his chair again. “You’re saying nuclear wrong.”

“Whatever.” Nate turns back to the neglected bag of food on the counter. A few minutes later he puts a plate down in front of Erik, and takes his cup away for more water. Erik allows it, because Nate won this round fair and square, and if letting someone take care of him right now means his horrible truths won’t be revealed to Gabe later, he can take it.

**

Gabe’s supposed to go with him to Saturday’s game to watch from the press box, but he backs out at the last minute. “It’s stupid,” he says, folding his arms over his chest and shrugging, standing there still in his t-shirt and sweats while Erik is in his suit and doing up his tie. “But I just really don’t want to be around that many people.” 

“Is this the same thing, or a new thing?” Erik frowns down at his tie. He’s been doing this every two days for his entire adult life. Why do his hands sometimes forget how to do it? “Because you went to the grocery store with me yesterday and that was fine.”

“I know. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a new thing or what. I just... I don’t want to, tonight. Oh my god. What are you doing? Come here.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Erik obediently drops his hands and steps closer to Gabe. 

“No, you should go.” Gabe does the knot up quickly and straightens it against Erik’s throat. “I mean, I _should_ go, too. Fuck. Is there time for me to get dressed?”

“If you hurry.” Erik glances at the clock over the TV. “You know what, it’s fine. Stay here. You’re coming in with me on Monday, right? That’s soon enough.”

“That’s practice. I can handle practice. Of course, I thought I could handle tonight, until half an hour ago.” Gabe sighs and rests his hands flat on Erik’s chest for a moment, then steps back. “Okay. Thanks.”

“I’ll see you in a couple hours.” Erik catches his hand and pulls him back in again for a kiss. “Don’t beat yourself up.” Gabe holds his hand for an extra moment, staring at him with a hungry, lingering look that chills Erik’s spine a little. “What?”

“Nothing.” Gabe’s face flushes red, and he looks down at their hands. “I’m just really lucky, that’s all. To have you around.”

That’s a sweet thing to say, and Erik objectively loves it, but also— “Did Nate tell you something?”

Gabe frowns. “No, I haven’t talked to him. Why? What would he have to tell me? What happened?”

“Nothing.” Erik turns to grab his jacket. “I’ll see you later!”

“Don’t think you’re getting away with this!”

“It’s not important!” Erik bolts out the door and down the hall, ignoring the buzz of his phone in his pocket that is, probably, Gabe texting follow-up threats. He’ll deal with that later, hopefully after the boys get a win.

They _do_ get a win, and Erik goes out for a drink with them after. Just one solitary drink, because when he takes his phone out to finally answer Gabe’s teasing threats from earlier, he doesn’t get a response. 

He’d thought about asking Gabe if they could turn on location finder for each other, after... everything, but never quite worked up the guts to ask. He calls him instead, like it’s 2004, stepping outside the bar and standing upwind from the smokers while he waits for Gabe to pick up.

He does, thank god. “Hey, man,” Gabe says, sounding tired. “Sorry I missed your texts.”

“Were you sleeping?” Erik drags his heel along the sidewalk. “I hope you watched the game, it was pretty good.”

“I watched the first period. I was in the shower when you texted.” He sounds _really_ tired. Erik frowns down at his foot and looks down the street for a cab. Can’t book an Uber and talk to Gabe at the same time. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, because _everything okay?_ would lead to the _nothing_ dance and he can’t handle that right now. He can already feel the anxiety crawling up his throat and getting ready to choke him, tying knots in his back and neck as it goes.

“Ah...” Gabe sighs. “I decided to do some work while I was just sitting here, and I got some follow-ups on the interviews. TSN and ESPN both really want to do this. So I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

Shit. “I’ll head back. Be there in a few.”

“No, don’t. You don’t have to babysit me. I’m okay, just...”

Erik waits, but he doesn’t finish the thought, so Erik has to fill it in on his own. Just sad. Just scared. Just reliving some fucking... trauma. 

“How about a deal,” he says finally. “I’ll get a drink with the boys and then head back.”

Gabe hesitates a beat. “Is that the best I’m going to get?”

Honestly is the best policy. “Yes.”

“All right, fine. Deal.” Gabe sighs again, but there’s a different tone to it that Erik knows goes with a half-smile. “But don’t rush through it.”

“Yes, captain.” He goes back inside, weaving his way through the crowd to the table where the guys are giving each other shit. “Better have a beer for me, Dogg.”

“Of course.” Nate pushes the glass toward him. “You’re sticking around?”

“For as long as it takes me to drink this one.” He takes a drink. “Gabe’s not feeling great. He’s okay, just... not at a hundred percent.”

“That sucks.” He picked up on what Erik was saying, though—Erik can tell by the raised eyebrow. “Sticking around for this one, though?”

“Yeah. And not rushing through it.” He bumps his knee against Nate’s under the table. “Is that good enough to keep you off my back?”

“It is, actually.” Nate bumps him back and grins. “Baby steps, man. We’ll make you a well-adjusted person someday.”

“Not going to happen.” Erik takes a tiny sip and grins back, sticking his tongue out at him through the gap in his teeth. “But it’s cute that you keep trying.”

It’s an extra twenty minutes with the guys, but they appreciate the effort and Erik remembers why this part is good, why hanging out with the guys matters. He gives fist-bumps and shoulder-touches all around before he leaves and promises to bring his A-game on Monday, then walks back to his truck and makes his way back to the condo, humming tunelessly with the radio.

He texts Gabe from one red light to say he’s on his way and checks for a reply at the next; it’s a thumbs-up and a beer mug. That doesn’t sound like someone in crisis, so he doesn’t tense up too badly on the rest of the drive. Gabe’s having a rough one and needs company. Erik can handle that, just like he would have before any of this happened.

Gabe’s not in the living room or the bedroom when he gets there; Erik eventually finds him in his office, frowning at his laptop, Zoey curled at his feet. “Hey,” Erik says, leaning in the doorway. “I’m back.”

“Hey.” Gabe glances up, then back at the screen. He’s wearing his glasses, a look that always makes Erik a little weak in the knees. “I didn’t mean to rush you.”

“You didn’t.” He nods toward the laptop. “Can I come over there, or personal?”

Gabe droops in his seat. “Sorry, come here, of course.”

Erik makes his way over, stepping carefully over Zoey and leaning down to squint at the screen. He needs his own glasses for this, shit. 

It’s an email from Avs PR, outlining two proposals for interview conditions. One of them is a basic sit-down interview at a studio, with preliminary boundaries for questions. The other is more profile-style, with allowances for shooting at Gabe’s home and the arena. Erik’s stomach twists a little at that idea, even though he knows that letting cameras in is totally normal for the kinds of press expected these days. This isn’t really a secret hiding place for the two of them and never has been. Still, his first instinct is to say no.

He doesn’t get a say in this, though. This is all Gabe’s. 

“I guess these are both pretty reasonable,” he says. “Is this for TSN or ESPN?”

“They want to pitch both to both and see who bites.” Gabe sighs and closes the laptop, rubbing his eyes. “This is for my mark-up, I can suggest more restrictions or veto stuff or whatever.” He half-smiles, looking up at Erik. “Which I haven’t done yet, because every time I look at it my head just fills up with white noise and I can’t think of anything. I just want to delete my whole inbox and go back to bed.”

Erik squeezes the back of Gabe’s neck. “You can tell them you’re not ready for this and it needs to wait.”

“What if it’s not any better after waiting? Maybe I should just rip the band-aid off now.”

“I don’t think saying you want to wait at least a season would be unreasonable, Gabe. That’s giving yourself time to heal up. You don’t even have scabs yet, forget scars.”

Gabe laughs and looks up at him again. “Brain scabs? That’s gross.”

“Feelings scabs.”

“ _Gross_.” Gabe snags Erik’s arm and guides it around his chest, kind of forcing a hug. Erik goes with it once he realizes that’s where it’s going, of course, but—typical Gabe. Bossy. He kisses the top of Gabe’s head and rests his chin there, breathing him in.

“I’m glad you went out with the guys,” Gabe says after a moment. “Even just for a little while.”

“Don’t start.”

“You needed a breather.” Gabe kisses the swell of Erik’s forearm. “I’m not going to give you shit about taking care of me, I _like_ you taking care of me, but you do need to take time for yourself so you don’t crack under the pressure.”

Erik grinds his jaw a little, knowing Gabe will feel it right through the top of his head. “So Nate ran his mouth after all.”

“No.” Gabe laughs again. “Nate has been venting to Sam and Mikko, and got them all anxious, and they came running to their captain.”

“I’m gonna kick his ass. Out here scaring the kids.” Erik sighs and shifts to rest his head on Gabe’s shoulder instead. “I’m fine.”

Gabe’s quiet for a moment. “I trust you to know your limits.”

Erik’s heart hitches in his chest. “That’s... maybe the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Really?” Gabe tilts his head. “I can think of a lot of stuff I’ve said in bed that I would rank higher.”

“That’s not sweet, that’s... well, filthy, mostly.” Erik closes his eyes again. “You trusting me to know myself, though. It means a lot.”

“Well, it’s true. So there you go.” Gabe moves his shoulder gently, cuing Erik to pull back. “Let’s go to bed?”

“Please.” Erik lets him up and follows him across the condo. Gabe catches him by the hand when they get to the bedroom and gently spins him so they’re facing each other, then walks Erik backward until he bumps into the bed and sits down on the edge of the mattress. 

Gabe kneels down in front of him, running his hands up and down Erik’s thighs. “Can I ask you something?”

Erik nods and starts to unbutton his shirt, untucking it from his suit pants when he gets there. Gabe’s hands move to the fly of the pants before he speaks again, fumbling with the button and zipper. 

“Would you be mad at me if I don’t come back this year?” Gabe’s voice is low, his eyes focused on his hands. “If I don’t play til training camp.”

“Wow. Way to kill the mood, Landeskog.” Erik falls back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “But no, I won’t be mad.”

“What about disappointed?” Gabe starts dragging Erik’s pants down off his hips, and Erik arches up to help him, at least halfheartedly. 

“I want you to take care of yourself,” he says finally, firmly. “If that means not playing, if that means not doing interviews—whatever. You’ve gotta do scabs and scars and all that stuff before you’re healed, and that means not doing stuff that’s going to rip them open, right?”

He’s lying there in boxers and socks, with Gabe resting his head on one bare thigh, it’s not even close to a setting he would expect this conversation in. But he’s not tapping out. 

“I miss it. I want to come back.” Gabe’s voice is low, his breath warm against Erik’s skin. “But I think about all those eyes on me and I want to rip my skin off. Still.”

Erik reaches down and cups his hand against the back of Gabe’s head, cradling it against him. “Then you’re not ready. It’s okay.”

"It’s so stupid. Why can’t I do this? They keep asking me to come to a game and be featured and on the screen, just wave the fans, and I can’t even do that.”

“We talked about this before, remember?” Erik sits up, needing to see him while he talks, needing to touch him with both hands. “Your brain figures stuff out at different speeds. Have you talked to your therapist about this? Because I bet he said the same thing, right?” Gabe laughs a little, a watery sound, and nods. “Well, there you go. The team didn’t announce a timeline for you coming back, nobody’s going to judge if you take the rest of the season off.”

“Plenty of people are going to judge me.”

“Okay, but those are people with Twitter names like avsluvr42069, we don’t listen to them.”

Gabe laughs again, turning his head to kiss Erik’s thigh. “What if you fuckers win the Cup without me?”

Erik has that answer ready without even thinking. “Then we’ll go back-to-back next year so you get one too.”

“You’ve got this all figured out, huh?” Gabe looks up at him, eyes wide, some of the weariness cleared from them. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“That’s a question for a priest, not me.” Erik smooths his hand over Gabe’s hair. “Get up here, okay? Lie down with me.”

Gabe shakes his head, running his hands over Gabe’s thighs again and then reaching for the waistband of his boxers. “Nope. You’re still getting your dick sucked. That was a detour, not a change of plans.”

“Oh, wow, okay. When you put it that way.” Erik lies back again, braced on his elbows this time, watching as Gabe pulls his boxers down and away and then leans in to breathe against his cock. Erik’s hips rise up of their own volition and Gabe’s hands settle on his hips, taking control while Gabe follows his breath with a long, slow lick. 

Erik grips at the sheets, closing his eyes as Gabe teases him slowly, exploring with his lips and tongue but not taking Erik in his mouth, not yet, not until Erik gasps out a rough plea. He remembers, in a distant corner of his mind that can still think right now, one of the first times they did this, when Gabe knelt up over him and smirked down and said _you have to ask me_ and for the first time in his life Erik let himself give in and _beg_.

This isn’t quite the same as that. But whenever Gabe goes down on him there’s the little moment of teasing, waiting for him to ask one way or another. Erik always does it, sometimes making himself draw things out and sometimes falling right away. 

They trust each other to know what they need. Maybe it really is that simple.

**

Gabe gets up first in the morning; Erik isn’t sure how much earlier, but when he wakes up the bed is cold, the coffee maker is cold, the butter left out after Gabe made toast has softened in its tub. He makes his own coffee and toast before he goes looking, this time letting the soft clicking sounds lead him back to the office.

Gabe looks up, hair a wild mess. “There you are.”

“Here I am.” Erik stands on the opposite side of the desk. “What’re you working on?”

Gabe’s eyes drift back to the screen. “I emailed Sakic and the front office that I want to sit out the rest of the season, and what do we have to do to make that happen. Now I’m trying to write my answer to PR.”

Erik takes a bite of toast and chews it thoroughly before answering. “Just tell them to fuck off.”

Gabe snorts. “I’m trying to be more diplomatic.”

“Why? They can fuck off, and come back in a year.” Erik shrugs at Gabe’s look. “It’s better than wasting their time acting like you might negotiate, right?”

“I guess.” Gabe types something else and frowns at it. “What do you want to do today?”

“Hmm.” Erik tilts his head, considering. “Well, I should probably jog and stretch so I don’t die at practice tomorrow. Other than that, I don’t know. Did you have something in mind?”

Gabe nods, typing again. “You want to go back up to Boulder again? The overlook?”

Erik blinks. “Uh. Sure? But why?”

Gabe’s face reddens and his eyes stay carefully down, but Erik can see his jaw tightening in determination. “It’s dumb. Don’t laugh.”

“Promise.” 

Gabe puts his hands flat on the desk, then looks up and meets Erik’s eyes. “I want a picture from there. To remind me that I can still go up there, whenever I want, and that you’ll come with me.”

His voice shakes a little, and Erik knows all the way down in his bones that Gabe just laid a part of himself out, raw and vulnerable, because he trusts Erik to take care of it.

“Of course,” he says, not looking away. “Whenever you’re ready.”


End file.
